Barataria – The work of Erik Harehttps://erikhare.com
I don't break news, I fix it.Mon, 13 Aug 2018 15:12:14 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/4128d6447bd355f35b701d58ff4618cb?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngBarataria – The work of Erik Harehttps://erikhare.com
Panic, But Slowlyhttps://erikhare.com/2018/08/13/panic-but-slowly/
https://erikhare.com/2018/08/13/panic-but-slowly/#respondMon, 13 Aug 2018 15:12:02 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=9034The economy has been expanding since the start of 2010. It hasn’t been rapid, and It’s only now enough to absorb the workers who need jobs, but it’s real. It’s only natural for economists to ask, “When does it end?”

That’s not because they are extremely un-fun people. It’s their job. Recessions are a much bigger problem when no one sees them coming, and history shows that we never really see them coming. And that economists are always worried about the next recession, but we don’t really listen to them.

So is it time to panic? As Groucho tells us, “There’ll be plenty of time to panic later.”

Good times. Rollin’?

It’s not just the longevity of this boom that has market watchers worried that something bad is about to happen. The top reasons for concern are always related to a bubble, or the value of investments simply getting too far ahead of real market conditions. This is in many ways a variation on the arguments in favor of a stable money supply in that rises in asset prices essentially mean that there is more potential wealth in the system. Once some people try to convert that to cash, it simply goes away. It doesn’t actually exist.

Is there a huge bubble in asset prices that will bring down the whole economy when it collapses? That is what happened in 2008 when a series of bubbles, more than simply housing, went south in a hurry. While there is a lot of worry that investment markets for stocks, bonds, and commodities are experiencing bubbles to varying degrees, there isn’t enough there to bring down the economy.

Stock prices have so little to do with the real economy that they can go up or down as they please.

It’s never all about stocks.

Another common concern is that rising interest rates are going to be a threat to the economy. After more than a decade of extremely cheap money, this is genuinely going to reshape the economy. But how much? And will it cause a recession? The short answer is that it has to slow down growth, but not necessarily turn it negative. The Fed clearly doesn’t want to run rates up quickly, although it may feel a need to catch up quickly if inflation really takes off.

That has the potential for seriously derailing everything. Like many recessions, the net result could well be that money is diverted into better investments all around, rather than simply seeking a higher yield regardless of how junky it might be. But that’s far from the only issue with interest rates.

The chart below shows net consumer credit divided by GDP since the start of the last Depression. Notice a clear trend:

This growth is outpacing economic growth rather dramatically. Where it stood at 16% of GDP in 2000, it quickly rose to 18% through the first official recession of the 2000s – this was a big part of the inflation of the bubble. After not quite falling back down to where it started, it roared back recently and now stands well over 19%. In terms of household debt, the US is even weaker than it was in 2007.

It’s worth noting that even the 16% level in 2000 was an historic high. All of this is uncharted waters.

It’s still all about the jobs.

So is there a threat of a recession? The long and short of it is that yes, rising interest rates have a unique ability to really throttle back not just investments, but consumer spending. All of this at a time when Baby Boomer retirement is likely to keep the economy in check. At this point, the path to salvation is essentially a race between real (inflation adjusted) wages increasing to a level where consumers can pay down that debt or at least maintain spending if interest rates rise.

Is there a potential for a recession? Very much so. But the indicators most watched have nothing on the level of debt as a warning sign. It’s always the things no one is looking for that can get us, and consumer debt is definitely in that category now.

If you’d really like to panic, that’s a good reason for it.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/08/13/panic-but-slowly/feed/0financingwabbitoidPresentations That Boomhttps://erikhare.com/2018/08/10/presentations-that-boom/
https://erikhare.com/2018/08/10/presentations-that-boom/#respondFri, 10 Aug 2018 14:09:01 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=9032It is a bizzy Friday. I hope you enjoy this classic piece.

You find yourself in a dark room, dazzled by charts and graphs and pictures that go by just fast enough to lose you. The speaker at the front is well intentioned and trying desperately to make you as enthusiastic as they are, but it’s no use. Your mind wanders, desperately trying to find something to daydream about that will keep you from nodding off, drooling on yourself, or both.

Here’s something to think about before you drift off into an embarrassing situation: Franz von Uchatius, General of the Austrian Artillery – and the Grandfather of PowerPoint.

General Franz von Uchatius, 1811-1881

General Uchatius had a little bit of a problem in the 1850s. The cannons under his command were of absolutely top quality and more accurate than most people believed cannons would ever be. The only problem was that ballistics – the science of hitting your target – involved a lot of complex geometry that a lot of the brave young Austrian gunners simply didn’t understand. Apparently bleeping over that part of school has always been a problem.

Uchatius knew that to do a good presentation to an artillery class, he needed visual aides. These had been around since the very beginning of practical presentations on how to do things like whack your enemy over the head. But when the weapon is a club or battle-axe it’s a lot easier when it comes to show and tell time. You can’t exactly take a large number of students out to the artillery range and cover the fine points of Euclidean geometry without a few of them getting more interested in the things that go boom. General Uchatius wanted a captive audience.

Since nothing existed to provide handy visual aides, Uchatius decided to invent a system. He decided to project an image using carbon arc light (an early kind of very bright light bulb) and lenses. It took him years to perfect the system, but in 1853 he was able to hold a lecture on the fine points of gunnery in a darkened auditorium of young artillerymen. How amused the audience was went unrecorded.

A French “la Hitte” canon from 1859. Deadly accurate in trained hands.

Gen. Uchatius was a man who invented many things, such as a bomb dropped out of a balloon and better steel for cannons. He’s most remembered, however, for his unnamed device that went on to be the father of the motion picture projector. He should also be remembered as the Grandfather of PowerPoint, since its basic idea was what his ballistics presentations were aiming for all along.

What’s particularly funny about this is that it all started with a military presentation. The military has become famous for relying on PowerPoint to destroy, er, relay information from one place to the next. Academic papers have been written on the value of these presentations in a culture where information is absolutely critical, but the use continues on. What would General Uchatius think?

Hey! You’re going to be tested on this stuff!

When you find yourself nodding off during a presentation, remember the use of cannon. I don’t mean you should use cannons to obliterate the presenter, but if that fantasy helps you stay awake it could be useful. Remember that the same setting you are in was developed over 150 years ago to teach the military of an empire that hasn’t existed for 90 years – so in the long run, it didn’t do them a lot of good. Also remember that as surely as cannons don’t kill innocent people but artillerymen do, PowerPoint doesn’t slaughter a good topic – presenters do.

If you do have to blame someone, don’t blame Microsoft – it’s all General Franz von Uchatius’ fault. Just remember that things haven’t changed as much in 150 years as many people might think.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/08/10/presentations-that-boom/feed/0franz von uchatiuswabbitoidA French "la Hitte" canon from 1859. Deadly accurate in trained hands.Hey! You're going to be tested on this stuff!Google “craven”https://erikhare.com/2018/08/08/google-craven/
https://erikhare.com/2018/08/08/google-craven/#commentsWed, 08 Aug 2018 14:50:17 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=9029The battle between the US and China is heating up. The stakes are high, having both pride and money on the line. It’s a classic showdown reminiscent of old times.

It looks like 1995, that is, in that a search engine war is just heating up. This one is between google and baidu, the Chinese search engine that rose to dominate the Chinese market after google pulled out in 2010 rather than comply with censorship laws. Google is reversing that decision in a strategic business operation which will leverage …

… oh, who am I kidding. Google is selling out bigtime and crawling back to China. Wow.

Time to polish up this … brand.

Like everything which passes for news today, this started out as a leak through suspicious sources. The Intercept first published the story a week ago based on some internal, confidential documents they obtained that were confirmed by unnamed sources. Journalism today is just wonderful.

The story has not been confirmed or denied by google, but there has been a reaction in China. That generally means a confirmation, reading between the lines, so we know this is real. Seriously, that’s how journalism works. Baidu, the search engine that came to dominate China in their absence, said that “Chinese tech companies have already taken the lead… The whole world is copying from China.”

This is, of course, all about national pride at some point.

Mao is always watching. Is he, though?

Speaking of national pride, the documents suggest that google is indeed going to completely cave in to government censorship, disallowing all references to human rights, resistance, and so on. A test bed was apparently developed, nicknamed “Maotai” after the incredibly strong poteen-like liquor known as Baiju.

In other words, take a strong drink but be sure you don’t taste it.

This is an important development for a lot of reasons. First of all, the world is going to be connected no matter what and it is ultimately foolish to try to stop it. Second of all, governments are going to control what they can’t stop, if at all possible, and the amount of money involved in international trade is such that big companies will indeed swallow their pride to comply.

Lastly, China is rising, but you already knew that one.

Be afraid?

It’s easy to criticize google for caving in so blatantly, as I just did by coloring that sentence the way I did. This has to feel bad. But in the long run, a China with google is going to be a tiny bit more open than a China without it. Things will get through once in a while, probably more than ever get through the obsequious Baidu. Competition between the two will highlight the relationships between our cultures and spark curiosity. It’s better to be there than to not be there.

Still, this is how it’s going at this moment. Nation states still dictate the rules on their turf, despite the enormous pressures to be global. The strain is still building over this, and it’s not clear how it will be revealed.

For now, google and parent company Alphabet will be competing in a world of Hanzi characters and Chinese rules. We live in interesting times.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/08/08/google-craven/feed/1wabbitoidInflation is Hiphttps://erikhare.com/2018/08/06/inflation-is-hip/
https://erikhare.com/2018/08/06/inflation-is-hip/#commentsMon, 06 Aug 2018 15:06:51 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=9026Inflation is certainly surging, it remains to be seen how much of a problem that is. What we do know is that some regions of the nation, particularly cities where businesses have embraced technology, are surging ahead quickly. Some a bit too quickly.

In a nation already divided, the success of some cities is only accelerating the divide. If they become too successful their high cost may ultimately slow growth. But for now, the benefits of the recovery are heavily centered on a few places.

Life is good – some places.

Information on the economies of metro areas comes in a bit slower than the nation as a whole. It is derived from surveys conducted by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The monthly employment survey, for example, has a wealth of information on cities all across the nation. Unfortunately, it takes a few months of it to create a rolling set of data large enough to draw useful conclusions from.

For this reason, nearly all information is annual. Some final figures for 2017 have come in, and they show some distinct patterns.

Reading between the lines is not all that hard.

Private companies also have an interest in data like this, and simplified “teaser” versions are published quite often. The most useful for many people is probably the Bankrate Cost of Living Calculator, which can tell you just what you need to earn elsewhere if you are thinking of moving. After all, there is a tradition in America of moving on – when the going gets tough, the tough get up and leave. If you are interested in seeking new opportunities elsewhere it’s a great tool.

Which cities are seeing the most inflation in 2018? Here’s a short list from a recent study, this one taken from BLS data and Zillow home price changes, a good leading Indicator:

These cities are seeing their cost of increase rise at about double the average rate from 2014-2017, which means 4% or higher in 2018. This is also a relative ranking of the “hipster” quality of cities across America, which shows that the phenomena attracting young people with the skills to generate disposable income is starting to make such cities expensive. This is not a coincidence. These are, indeed, the engines of growth.

They’re not all hipsters. They’re allright.

Away from various hipster paradises, costs are indeed rising nearly everywhere. In New Jersey, for example, relatively stagnant wages and retirement incomes are being eroded quickly by inflation. The use of food banks is going up across the state as a result, and a warning has been issued to the program that provides winter fuel assistance as a result.

That is the problem with growth as we have seen it generally. The rich are indeed the first to benefit and many people are being left more behind.

That is only going to accelerate for the foreseeable future. The new economy that is growing up is based on technology and trade, no matter what certain people might tell you about trade. The cities that will benefit from this the most are the ones that have the infrastructure and the knowledge base in place already.

In short, if you are thinking of following that great American tradition of going where the jobs are Barataria is not going to do anything to discourage you. Just keep in mind that it’s probably a lot more expensive in the cities that do have good salaries, meaning that the allure of high pay is not what it seems at first.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/08/06/inflation-is-hip/feed/1millennialswabbitoidAwful or Awesome?https://erikhare.com/2018/08/03/awful-or-awesome/
https://erikhare.com/2018/08/03/awful-or-awesome/#commentsFri, 03 Aug 2018 14:10:54 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=9024Words mean things, or so the saying goes. Unfortunately, things change so words have to change. That’s where it gets interesting.

In English, especially, words are not cold and unchangeable.

English is an adaptable language that mutates easily. The problem is that language is useful for both communication and identity, so people sometimes deliberately use a word in a different way to show what group they belong to. There are also things that defy description.

My favorite word of all is “awful” for one simple reason – in the last 300 years, it’s meaning has completely reversed. It used to mean “awe inspiring”, a good thing, but somehow things big enough to inspire awe became terrifying. “Awful” became, well, awful. What makes this strange is that along the way inspiring awe was back in fashion, and the word “awesome” took the place previously held by “awful”. It’s worth noting, however, that nothing was ever “awful to the max”.

A word that had a near inversion is “artificial”, which was used to describe the great art of Christopher Wren’s Cathedral of Saint Paul in 1710. They meant it in the good way, which is that it was a great achievement of art. Today, we think of it as a word that describes Cheetos or other things that might include a touch of science run amok.

Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka

I recently decided to look up the word “wonk” to see where it came from, guessing that it had something to do with either the priesthood or carnies. It turns out that it came from Oxford in the 1950s, a word to describe a brilliant professor who is slightly “wonky” or off-kilter. A close reading of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” shows that the eccentric yet brilliant Willy Wonka is an old man ready to retire, which was the original use of the word. It’s a long way from there to either a world of “Pure Imagination” or George Stephanopolous, but that’s how it all diverged. Today the word is used more or less like “geek”, but in government policy.

Which brings me to “geek”, the classic word that changed its meaning. It appears to be an old Saxon word, geck, that means more or less village idiot or outcast. From there, people who spent the time it took to make early blikenlighted computers do something useful, which is just about eternity, found themselves far enough on the outside to get the handle. Then, something strange happened. The world went tech and the obsessives looked like heroes faster than they could shed the label. The word changed with them and is now almost a term of endearment.

You have been warned.

A word I strongly dislike is “snarky” for one simple reason – it doesn’t have any agreed upon meaning. It certainly started out as “annoying”, but if you look it up today the definitions range from “sarcastic or irreverent” to “irritable or short-tempered” and sometimes simply “arrogant”. A word that has no agreed upon meaning can only be used as an identity word, a way of saying who you are without having anything to say. I don’t see the point of it.

There are many other words that I like to play with, especially when it becomes clear that the House Committee on Oversight has a tendency to overlook things (well, duh!). But this is my list for now. If you have a few of your own, add them in the comments. Thanks!

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/08/03/awful-or-awesome/feed/1Gene-Wilder-as-Willy-WonkawabbitoidSequels & Rerunshttps://erikhare.com/2018/08/01/sequels-reruns/
https://erikhare.com/2018/08/01/sequels-reruns/#respondWed, 01 Aug 2018 14:38:13 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=9022This is a post from last year. Since it first ran, Foxconn has indeed started construction on their facility.

It’s hard to say exactly what the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer is going to do given how quickly the breathless announcement came out. What matters is that it had to be announced because it’s not actually about jobs or anything tangible. All of this is just a very expensive form of political theater, allbeit with stakes lower than last week’s show. Government is here to fix the economy and provide jobs, right? So here ya go.

Like many sequels dished up by Hollywood this is a must-see summer thriller. It’s following a well established formula that everyone loves. And like those movies, it begs the question – where did this come from?

John Maynard Keynes, 1883-1946.

If you love the movies, you may well love the book. It’s called The General Theory, by economic master John Maynard Keynes. The original idea, from 1936, was that classical economics didn’t exactly work. When demand falls and people are laid off from jobs the market may not respond. It’s up to government to put people back to work and “prime the pump” to get things going again.

This theory had the advantage of working extremely well, becoming the foundation for the New Deal and many other efforts around the world. It put a quick end to the Great Depression as people went back to work everywhere. Since it worked so well it became standard practice everywhere. Not enough jobs? It’s up to the government to create them, yes?

Of all the strange aspects of the General Theory, the most important is that no one thinks it’s true.

Tell me a story …

For something which was shown to work and has been practiced continuously everywhere for about 80 years, not being true should be a hindrance. But this is a show which no one can turn down for a lot of reasons. Like most works of fiction it also does have that basic turn of truth at the core of it.

Given that business cycles are a fact, it stands to reason that economic conditions change constantly. What works one day may not work the next. It stands to reason that Keynes was right in 1936 and he may well have been right again in 2008. It’s also reasonable that Milton Friedman was right in 1980, too.

But this is where the Hollywood magic comes in to create legends. Politicians are judged by the state of the economy whether we like it or not. Election cycles come in a very short term compared with business cycles, two years versus about 17. So every politician has a terrific incentive to do something, really anything, to make it look like they are earning their pay.

They have their own economics, after all.

Did you get our jobs?

What we wind up practicing is a series of market interventions which appear to have the approval of the first great market interventionist, Keynes. If government can boost demand for workers in a downturn, why not always? And why not have government boost capital investment while we are at it by lowering tax rates? After all, that’s really just the right-wing counter to the same basic theory that intervention is good.

Keynes didn’t just define left-wing politics after all. He defined the entire spectrum.

Given that all of these methods might well be useful in turns isn’t a very good story. Voters want action, they want an end to their suffering. Nevermind that lower growth is ultimately driven by the demographics of an aging population. Don’t pay any attention to the fact that a worker shortage is probably coming on quickly or that automation means that it takes a ridiculous amount of money to subsidize each of these jobs. Politicians, left and right, have to do something.

That’s the power of Keynes’ work. Everything comes from it, even the stuff that doesn’t make sense.

What a “job” used to mean for many.

We can expect more of this kind of reasoning as long as we accept a top-down industrial vision of what this thing we call an “economy” really is. If it’s all about industry, the thinking goes, all we have to do is encourage industry. That will give people jobs and that will keep them fat and happy through the election cycle.

If you don’t buy that, thank you. This is exactly why People’s Economics is essential. The old mythology, which defined far more than we might think, has run its course. It’s time for a new show – one that has the advantage of being true a lot more often than once every 70 years.

Don’t blame Keynes. He did his best. He never wanted to be screenwriter.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/08/01/sequels-reruns/feed/0keyneswabbitoidDestruction, Creative or ???https://erikhare.com/2018/07/30/destruction-creative-or/
https://erikhare.com/2018/07/30/destruction-creative-or/#respondMon, 30 Jul 2018 15:01:03 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=9015In the area of foreign policy, is Trump just plain crazy, or crazy like a fox? Is this random flailing bent on isolating America, or is it creative destruction which tears up the old deal before dictating a new one?

Everyone in America has their opinion now. But so, too, do the leaders of foreign nations who have to deal with it. Europe seems to think that Trump is an idiot for smashing the old alliances, and that’s understandable. China, on the other hand, is much more wary that they are dealing with a more serious and permanent change.

There are very good reasons for this.

Sun Zi (孫子). He wrote the book on warfare. Literally.

Sun Zi always taught the importance of understanding your enemy. Even if you fear China, you have to think like it. On the other hand, if you are in favor of a new, more balanced world order you have to realize this can’t happen without integrating China. No matter what your position is, understanding the Chinese perspective is critical. Since it is a given that Trump is smashing the world order as we know it, everyone has to understand where everyone else is coming from. The only alternative would be another stupid and pointless war based largely on misunderstanding, as most wars are.

Here are four reasons why China is taking Trump way, way more seriously than most of the world.

They have to. It would make no sense for China to not assume that the more hostile approach to China, countering it on all fronts, is not working to a deliberate plan. Just as this piece attempt to explain a Chinese perspective, there are many Chinese writing the mirror image attempting to explain the US perspective. Part of the reason for writing this as I am is to get everyone into the head of how Chinese analysis typically works.

Two boring technocrats who together make for an exciting time. Seriously.

They don’t have crazy or stupid leaders. China is a technocracy. There are about 30 people in the Central Committee who run the whole nation, for practical purposes. To get to the top you need connections and political skill, certainly. But you also need talent as an administrator. They honestly have skilled people running the show, and that has benefited them greatly despite being autocratic. Yes, the middle and lower management are not necessarily as good, and horribly corrupt, but as a technocracy China’s leadership works according to logic, planning, and strategy. They naturally assume that every other nation does, too.

China looks inward. No nation is bigger than China. No other nation has 4,000 years of continuous history and the incredibly dense culture that comes with that. No nation has developed as quickly, ever, and has the social and economic problems that come from unbelievably rapid change. China looks out for #1, and if you’re Chinese you know that this is China. Everything is about them. Some of this is reasonable given the situation, but many of their neighbors call it arrogant. In any case, it’s very much what they are about.

The poster for “Wolf Warrior 2.”

China doesn’t understand why other nations are scared. China does indeed have peaceful intentions, at least to the extent that they do not plan to build a global empire. They really do look inward, and their recent history teaches them that they are always a victim. At the same time, however, they are the silent and serious looking 200kg, 2m tall guy in the corner. Of course everyone is afraid of him, especially given his demeanor. Chinese do not seem to understand the need to be more, well, American about things and put a big friendly smile on their face. It’s just not in their nature. And they have proven absolutely terrible at making friends as a result.

These four points, taken together, are a story of an isolated nation that simply cannot understand why the great and powerful United States fears them or why it might lash out in desperation. There must be a scheme, a plan to dominate the world as Western people seem to have a tendency to do. And China simply has to prepare for this no matter what. It only makes sense to them. Given that they really only care about their own problems, which is reasonable given what is happening, everything on the outside is a threat. A major change is a threat. It has to be taken seriously, which in Chinese terms is studied absolutely to death and written up in a four-point analysis like this.

China is going to respond to Trump carefully and cautiously. But it will also do so as if there has been a permanent change in US policy. Creative destruction has already happened, no matter what. China will not look at us the same ever again. For better or worse, we have a very different situation on our hands than we did just a few years ago.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/07/30/destruction-creative-or/feed/0Sun ZiwabbitoidYa Gotta Laugh …https://erikhare.com/2018/07/27/ya-gotta-laugh/
https://erikhare.com/2018/07/27/ya-gotta-laugh/#commentsFri, 27 Jul 2018 14:21:01 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=9013There’s no way we’re gonna get through this without a few old-fashioned political jokes. It doesn’t matter what “it” is or what “getting through it” looks like to you. We gotta laugh. So I’ll start it off:

How many bloggers does it take to change a lightbulb? Um, whoever said that bloggers actually do something useful?

If you have a few jokes, please add them in the comments. Please, however, keep it light. It’s long past time to have a little fun with all of this.

How many Republicans does it take to have a party? Three. One to read Breitbart out loud, and two to dance to it.

How many CNN commentators does it take to change a lightbulb? Two. One is pro-light, the other is pro-dark. Neither seems to notice that no one is watching them in the dark.

How many DNC members does it take to change a lightbulb? 2,432. First, there is a walking sub-caucus, where in order to become viable they ….

How many Senators does it take to change a lightbulb? Um, if the Senate is involved, nothing is going to change.

How many Democrats does it take to change a lightbulb? Hard to say, millions seem to want to change it but we can’t tell how many will get off their butts and do it.

You want a political joke? How about HR 6450?

How many Trump supporters does it take to change a lightbulb? None. Trump will say it was changed, and they’ll all take to facebook to tell everyone how bright it is.

How many Sanders supporters does it take to have a party? I dunno, they don’t seem to want to have their own party.

How does Elon Musk change a lightbulb? After months of research and millions of dollars, a bulb so incredibly bright it can illuminate a whole city s developed. Stock in the company goes through the roof. But no one can afford the bulb.

How many Putin agents does it take to change a light bulb? Millions, all posting on facebook to trick everyone else into changing it.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/07/27/ya-gotta-laugh/feed/2DuckBarwabbitoidHow Stupid Are We?https://erikhare.com/2018/07/25/how-stupid-are-we/
https://erikhare.com/2018/07/25/how-stupid-are-we/#commentsWed, 25 Jul 2018 15:15:15 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=9005It’s nothing but a sideshow. The real story is indeed how much Trump has sold out to Putin and his mafia, and what that group did to get him elected. But as a sideshow to the main circus, The Michael Cohen story unfolding in the press, not a courtroom, is a great test.

We can see in real time just what this particular group of people is made of, and it’s not good. The salacious details, all about affairs and how to cover them up, is attention grabbing. But if there is anything to learn from this it’s that we are, indeed, dealing with a group of gangsters who are largely incapable of telling the truth.

That clarity might be useful when the real story advances to impeachment. More interestingly, we may learn just how the public digests stories like this and what they wind up believing.

Avenatti, Daniels, and Cooper. A story made for media, far too often by media.

When stories unfold in real time, they often become a bit jumbled. It’s important to start at the beginning with this one, like any other. Stormy Daniels, along with Karen McDougal and perhaps many other women, had long running affairs with Trump. During the campaign, it was decided as something like a routine matter to pay them off to keep them quiet. This task fell to Michael Cohen, Trump’s main fixer.

In order to set up the hush money, Both Daniels and McDougal needed their own attorneys. Interestingly, they had the same one. Keith Davidson may have reached out to them to arrange this, but it remains unclear. Contracts were signed and payments were made. These two women, and perhaps more, were silenced.

Michael Cohen, not in a still from a gritty 1970s cop drama.

Stormy Daniels apparently became suspicious about the entire matter for reasons that are unclear. She contacted a new attorney, Michael Avenatti, a well known legal bon vivantand attorney for the stars. He quickly started a series of legal maneuvers that included heavy press coverage, a civil suit, and apparently turning evidence over to the state of New York.

The main contention is that the Daniels settlement, at least, was crafted while attorney Davidson was a “puppet” for Cohen. The deal was not in her best interests. There was apparently evidence of such collusion, and New York swooped down on Cohen.

It has been revealed in court that most of the work that Cohen did was not protected by attorney-client privilege simply because it was not consistent with legal preparations. Cohen was, indeed, a “fixer” and not an actual attorney in any conventional sense. That is why his copious notes and recordings are not protected.

Rudy Giuliani, who is either crazy like a fox or just crazy.

Trump needed his own team to watch over this mess, and for reasons still unknown he selected Rudy Giuliani to be his “public lawyer.” It is not possible to image a worse performance. Giuliani has maintained that Trump knew nothing of the payoffs to women in question, among other things.

Within five days, CNN had the tape. It shows exactly the opposite of what Giuliani said, which is that Trump wanted it to be untraceable cash. More importantly, it shows that Trump knew about the payoffs before they even occurred, and that Giuliani and Trump have been consistently lying about the entire arrangements.

Does this remind anyone of anything?

It’s hard to tell just what is illegal in any of this. There is still more to come out on the role of American Media Inc, (AMI) the owner of the National Enquirer. They apparently paid a number of people for exclusive rights to their stories only to never run them. This “catch and kill” system is not a typical function of the press, so it is not protected speech, and would be a fairly obvious campaign contribution.

What is important, however, is that playing out with juicy details is a story of how this administration will say absolutely anything. There is an expectation that people will believe anything. Clearly, it’s based on a rush to be the first ones to make a claim, to have the first story in people’s heads. The eventual truth, the shadowy story filled with gangsters doing whatever they want, will be colored by that. It will also be clouded by antics throughout the process of truth being revealed.

Will this technique work? We will see. Overall, it has become an intelligence test for the American public. Will the first thing we hear be the only thing we wind up genuinely hearing? I, for one, doubt it. This is a terrible test in that the details are far too juicy to simply ignore all the follow-up.

How stupid are we? We’re about to find out.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/07/25/how-stupid-are-we/feed/3AvenattiwabbitoidOther People’s Moneyhttps://erikhare.com/2018/07/23/other-peoples-money/
https://erikhare.com/2018/07/23/other-peoples-money/#commentsMon, 23 Jul 2018 15:52:51 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8998The stock market is high. What gets a market feelin’ good and oblivious to everything around it is a powerful drug, one that has the ability to cloud judgement like nothing else. The opium of markets is OPM, or Other People’s Money.

Where the stock market should be feeling blue and dealing with the realities of a world unraveling with trade wars and debt, it’s taken another course. It’s decided to just get high the best way it can. In that state of euphoria none of that other stuff matters, and everything is good. We have plenty of OPM to go around.

Right now, the stock market has a serious OPM crisis that very few people are talking about.

Bad stock news requires a picture like this. Apparently, these traders still exist.

As you may know, Barataria predicted a serious stock market crash earlier this year. Some of that was realized when the trade war started to heat up, but it was nothing like we expected. It then rallied considerable. The S&P 500, once down almost 2% for the year, is now up almost 3.7%.

This is remarkable because interest rates are rising for the first time in over a decade. Inflation is a serious concern, as we noted before, and the bond yield curve is close to signaling another recession. But no one seems to care.

What is happening?

Not everyone can do this.

This is the time to pull out the old saying passed down to me by Herman Miller, an accountant who first taught me about this stuff when I was young. He was old enough to remember the crash of 1929, so his perspective was unique by today’s standards. “Never forget that the stock market is only a market for stocks,” he said. And it’s true.

All markets are a matter of supply and demand. If there is more money, there is more demand and prices rise. Nevermind the underlying fundamentals. Those should be driving the flow of money, but they don’t always. There are often reasons why there is simply too much money in the market at any given moment.

As Robin Williams once said, “Cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you have too much money.” Drugs are like that for both people and markets.

There are two kinds of OPM in the market right now. The first, and most obvious, is margin debt. That is money borrowed specifically to borrow stocks, and heavily charted and regulated since it caused so many problems when the bubble of the 1920s burst. Right now, it’s up to $650 billion, or 3.27% of GDP. It hasn’t been that high since 1929.

Total margin debt since 1997, from Advisor Perspectives

You can see that it goes along nicely with the rising market, in general, which is to be expected. But at some point, market risk should reasonable make the margin debt level off or even fall. It doesn’t, not ever. As we saw in 2008-9, investors keep borrowing money in a rising market right up until the point that they can’t. The addiction of OPM is too strong. It takes a margin call, or a situation where the stock has fallen so far that the debt is called in, before anything happens.

Yikes!

Margin buying increases volatility, but on the upside and the downside. It means that when things crash, they will really crash. The total margin debt is about 2.2% of the total stock market, and if it crashes back to where it stood at the recent minimum in 2009 stocks will lose 1.2% from just margin calls.

That’s not the only kind of OPM, however. China has a lot of experience with opium, having been forced to get hooked on it by the British, who were tired of seeing all their silver disappear into the nation to buy tea and porcelain in the mid 1800s. The British introduced the addictive stuff because they knew that cash flows were the key to everything.

China is experiencing its own debt crisis. The government has tried to tighten up on private borrowing, which was completely unregulated and out of control. Authoritarian nations don’t like that sort of thing. We don’t have a good real-time estimation for money flows out of China, but they are obviously increasing. The value of their currency, the Yuan Renminbi (People’s Currency, RMB) is dropping rapidly just as it did the last time that currency fled China rapidly while large defaults increase.

RMB to USD. Data from the Federal Reserve of St Louis.

Why is money leaving? For one thing, a trade war means that no one wants to hold RMB. For another, much of it was US money in the first place, US Dollars borrowed cheaply during the last Depression but sent to China for greater returns on the shadow banking market. In China, small lenders operating as something like loan sharks could easily get 20% for their money.

You like your tea green or fermented?

That’s not the case any longer. A rapidly falling RMB means that US Dollars are more expensive and money flees the nation rapidly. Think of it as margin buying for a whole nation, not a stock market.

When this money repatriates, it has to be parked somewhere. That means US Treasuries and perhaps the stock market. It’s lazy money with nowhere to go, and the appeal of hooking up with OPM in the stock market looks great on a hazy summer day.

The last time Chinese money came into the US like this, the total amount was about $1.5 trillion and possibly $500 billion wound up in stocks or equities. That’s similar to the margin amount.

None of this is good for anyone in the long term, of course. The fundamentals are still turning and the risk is there. A small hiccup can be amplified as everyone jonesin’ for another hit can’t find one and the margin calls come in.

OPM feels great as long as it keeps coming, but when it stops it’s a serious crisis. When will we run out of Other People’s Money? It’s hard to say, but it’s unreasonable to see this continue through the end of the year. Any strong shock will be amplified. It will be nasty when the market is in withdrawal after the OPM that’s keeping it high right now just plain dries up.

Canton, Ohio, is a brick and proper kind of town that most people know for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I was there to visit a customer who was kind enough to give one of the new products I was developing a real-world trial. That went well enough, but Canton itself was a bit of a mystery. Why is it there? What did people do that gave them the scratch to create a decent town that was aging poorly? One night I had to ask my favorite authority on these kinds of questions, which is a random person in a bar – color is always more important to me than accuracy. But in Canton, Ohio, there is only one answer to the question as to why they exist:

A roller bearing assembly.

Timken Roller Bearing. They make roller bearings, the things that make shafts and wheels turn with less friction and more precision. We talked about where these roller bearings went, and it became clear to me that steel from Pittsburgh came to Canton, was made into bearings that traveled to Cleveland where they became wheels for cars assembled in Detroit. Along the way they met up with rubber that came in the port of Baltimore to Akron and became tires. About 100 years ago the whole state of Ohio became something like an enormous factory – a label that won’t sit well with the people who live in the rolling farmland of southern Ohio, but they know what I mean.

I thought of this recently as GM pitched and rolled through a quickie BK. After all, it was the General along with the other two that created this assembly line that culminated in Detroit. It was all economy of scale back then, an efficiency gained through division of labor. Everyone specializes and does the same thing over and over, getting damned good at it. Entire tows like Canton had one thing in mind. As the years wore on, however, scale wasn’t quite enough. The cost of carrying inventory, in both money and quality control, caused the automakers to squeeze their production into a lean athletic shape. More outsourcing to independent suppliers created odd dysfunctional relationships like a family, careening between Ozzie and Harriet and la Cosa Nostra. Canton fell on hard times.

Big companies have been slow to hire, slow to increase hours

Cars, and other things, are made very differently today. The great migration of material through the continent that made our car companies possible will have to be replaced by an incredibly efficient machine that holds nothing any longer than it has to, getting its supplies of parts each day to last them just that day and pushing the cars out the door made to order. The old economies of scale are dead.

What does this mean for places like Canton? If nothing else, they can’t survive being just one cog in the great mechanical wonder that spits out cars – but they know this. But the reality of reduced inventory and a greater commitment to the whole will continue to change manufacturing as we know it.

Another project I was working on, when I was even younger, involved reducing the inventory of finished product in a plant. They had about 4 days worth of stuff that was gradually wrapped up and sent off in trucks to the distributors. I found the solution when I saw a small fleet of trailers parked on the back lot – we cut 7 more dock doors, parked the trailers in the new holes, and put a sign on each one for the distributor it was going to. Finished product was loaded directly into the trailer, eliminating the need for any other place to store it. The factory went from a total of 7 days total dwell time to about 3.5 – but there was still a problem. Those trailers spent a good 2 days on the road, meaning that once we had done just about everything we could the limits of transportation started to seem significant.

How will a small company like Tesla or just about any other manufacturing operation be able to make it without great heaping gobs of capital that create economies of scale? Eventually, after all the wisdom of W Edward Deming has been exhausted it comes down to transportation. The wonder of the great factory known as Ohio isn’t in the towns that built one thing and built it well, it was in the trains that pulled it all together to make it something valuable.

The faster we can move stuff, the more we can keep our real world at pace with our ever increasing information exchange and the rate of change it can create. Great ideas about the new economy are one thing, but we have to make them real if we’re going to restructure ourselves to the economy that replaces what we once had. Some of that will include manufacturing, whether it’s solar cells or consumer electronics or cars. Towns like Canton probably won’t want to cast their lot so completely with one industry anymore, having been once burned, but the ability to specialize is a good thing for overall efficiency. The secret is how those specialties are integrated, and a big part of that is our transportation infrastructure.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/07/20/one-giant-factory/feed/2TimkenwabbitoidTreasonhttps://erikhare.com/2018/07/18/treason/
https://erikhare.com/2018/07/18/treason/#commentsWed, 18 Jul 2018 15:05:45 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8993The United States is under attack.

It is not an attack with bombs or airplanes. No one has been killed and property has not been damaged. It is, however, an attack on the most valuable thing that we have, something over a million people have gladly given their lives in the past to protect – our democracy.

This is a highly coordinated and sustained attack by a foreign power. It is still ongoing, and appears to have gradually grown more sophisticated over a period of years. There is reason to believe that will continue unless it is stopped.

Denial of this attack and the perpetrators who we certainly know are carrying it out, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, is hindering our response to this attack and making our democracy more vulnerable. That this effort to thwart our defenses and distract the public’s attention away from the threat comes from the very top of our leadership can only be described as treason.

The Founding Fathers very very careful and deliberate.

The Constitution of the United States is very specific. The founders did not want treason to be used as broadly as it had in England, as it was the most effective way to shut down criticism of the government. A free society demands a definition of treason which is very specific and only applies to particularly heinous and obvious acts. The precise text is found in Article III Section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

This is the only crime mentioned in the Constitution. It specifies levying war against the United States or providing “aid and comfort” to the enemy who is at war as the only definition of treason. It is a high standard all around.

The source of all chaos.

There is no question that Russia has been involved in a sustained attack on the US electoral system. For an update on what is known to the public, this excellent website is keeping track of what has been released so far. While there is no evidence that voting itself has been affected, it is not for a lack of trying. The debate that leads up to elections has certainly been affected, and we have learned that the Democratic Party’s entire playbook for 2016 was stolen.

This is more significant than the information that was taken in the Watergate burglary.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that all of this is indeed accurate and that more needs to be done to protect our elections. This is not a partisan issue. The facts are well established and accepted at this point: Russia interfered in the 2016 election for the purpose of helping Trump, and continues to interfere where they can.

In the face of this, President Trump has repeatedly denied that the election was interfered with. He has blocked attempts to secure the next election in November. Most recently, he met with Putin and accepted on the face of it Putin’s denial that this interference occurred.

This is very much giving aid and comfort to the enemy at a time when the nation is under attack. It is not incompetence, in that it is a consistent and deliberate series of actions. The process of responding to the attacks on the United States and its electoral system have been diminished by the actions of the President and have been discredited by his words alongside the perpetrator of these attacks.

This meets the Constitutional definition of treason. The President needs to be removed from office as soon as possible for the purpose of having an executive in charge who is willing and able to meet the challenges posed by sustained attacks on the core of the American system.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/07/18/treason/feed/17declarationwabbitoidInflationhttps://erikhare.com/2018/07/16/inflation/
https://erikhare.com/2018/07/16/inflation/#commentsMon, 16 Jul 2018 15:28:26 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8988In 1981, America stood at a genuine crossroads of the Postwar era. It seemed as though everything had been floundering for nearly a decade. Watergate, oil price shocks, and inflation were eating away at the faith and the paychecks of American workers. Millions of them had entered the workforce as Baby Boomers came of age, only to find that working life was no longer a ticket to any kind of American Dream.

Into this rode a hero as if on horseback. The assault on runaway inflation had been orchestrated since 1979, but it was about to come to full fruition. No, that hero wasn’t Ronald Reagan, it was Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Interest rates rose to 21%, the highest the Fed has ever seen. It worked. Volcker would eventually be mythologized heavily for his role in killing inflation once and for all.

It’s an important story because inflation, the villain of the 1970s, is definitely back.

That’s the stuff.

The consumer price index rose 2.9% in June. This is considerably ahead of the Federal Reserve’s 2.0% target and similar to the 2.8% rate in May. It doesn’t appear to be accelerating, so the Federal Reserve is strangely unconcerned. “Core” inflation, which excludes the more volatile food and energy prices, is only at 2.3%.

While inflation doesn’t seem like a serious problem yet, it is likely to become one. As we’ve noted before, there is a worker shortage in many key areas, especially transportation. While the cost of finding truck drivers is going up, companies have yet to really past this on to consumers. When they do, it is likely to affect everything that is shipped – which is to say absolutely everything.

Currently, the Fed Funds rate stands at 2.0%. By the Mankiw estimation, it should be about 6.0%. That means that it not only needs to rise, it needs to rise quickly to tame inflation:

Current Fed Funds Rate in red, estimated target in blue.

But is it really that bad? In the 1980, the rise in the consumer price index hit an annualized rate of 14%, much higher than it is now. The current rate is really nothing more than the average since 1990, really. There aren’t any signs that it is accelerating, just staying higher than we’ve been used to.

Former Fed Chair Volcker

This is where Volcker’s actions become important. In October 1979, he changed the focus of the Federal Reserve away from inflation itself to the growth in money supply. He essentially put the Fed Funds rate on autopilot, freeing himself from having to explain its actions. It was an easier sell, all in all. If the net interest rate on everything went up dramatically, well, it’s just what was needed and nothing more.

The action was delayed a bit for reasons that are not clear, but by the middle of 1981 the Fed Funds Rate hit 22.4%. The resulting recession was nearly catastrophic, but it did tame inflation. No one has seriously worried about it since.

It is all about the growth in the money supply, however. Particularly when it outstrips real GDP increases over a long period of time. And we can see that it has been doing just that, too:

Money supply growth as the broad MZM, in blue with GDP growth in red. Money supply growth consistently outstripping GDP has to eventually be inflationary.

Will we see a bigger spike in inflation ahead? The short answer is that we have to, for various reasons. If wages ever do rise, it will certainly lag the effects of inflation that are already in place. That will only feed the upward spiral.

The Fed will have to increase interest rates rather dramatically over the next year in order to tame inflation, or it will risk being in a situation where a Volcker Shock is the only option. One way or the other, it’s safe to bet on higher rates. It’s simply a question of when and how much.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/07/16/inflation/feed/3financingwabbitoidRaging Against Ragehttps://erikhare.com/2018/07/13/raging-against-rage/
https://erikhare.com/2018/07/13/raging-against-rage/#respondFri, 13 Jul 2018 14:41:18 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8986When I wrote this piece, the Tea Party was just starting to rise in opposition to Obama’s … well, it certainly wasn’t his being black that was an issue, so it must have been abuse of power or something like that. But the process that got us to where we are today was just starting. What was it like? It was remarkably predictable, sadly. Here we are, a bit lower than I ever hoped but really on the same path. Enjoy this trip back in time.

The situations have been coming on strong for years, but they seem to be peaking. Everywhere you visit on the internet, and sometimes even in public, we all run into someone who can take any subject and make it into a kind of right-wing rant:
“Sure is hot today!”
“That’s not evidence of global warming!”

It wasn’t long ago that characters and attitudes like this were the domain of the other side – those who were against The System, The Man, The Establishment, They. Has everything flipped, or is this all one big phenomenon?

Many people feel angry when the world gets away from them constantly.

I’ve been amused by these curious characters for some time. By “amused” I mean in turns curious, exasperated, and desperate to deflate somehow. How do people become this focused on the One Big Thing, the theory that explains all of the powerlessness and frustration that is common in a global Depression?

The answer I think is that the very real sense that things aren’t working for the people of this nation and world is meeting a general lack of appropriate leadership at nearly every level. Our economy is rapidly deteriorating into Haves versus Have-Nots, those with jobs who work long hours and those who are trying to find something to live off of. The people we might want to look to as leaders in government, business, entertainment, or anything else are clearly looking out only for their own interests and grabbing what they can.

When this was first written, the anger was only starting to consume Stewart, too.

Many people who don’t like this phenomenon find fault in the infortainment world that has produced a number of clowns turned pundits of many forms. Jon Stewart is my particular favorite of this group and not just because his politics is lefty – he’s the one who has remained consistently honest about his role as clown first. But they are all clowns – entertainers who juggle issues and dare us to keep our eyes on the stuff they fling into the air with artful handwork.

Much as I think it is easy to blame infortainment for our problems, the delusion that it is a substitute for real leadership is what has given the clowns influence and power. I’d rather look elsewhere to explain our lack of real leadership.

Deep in my heart, I do believe that the root has to be a world that is too big to understand. People’s connection to their world doesn’t come in gradual layers that go from individual to family and community and state, but straight into the global pipeline. The structured world that was common two generations ago might seem stifling, but it had effective barriers between large forces and the efforts of individuals. Natural lines allowed people to organize into effective movements, if necessary, and develop leadership skills. There were a lot of “minor leagues” that tested individuals and allowed them to grow.

I’m writing this on Bastille Day, a topic that I was thinking of using as a central theme of this piece. I begged off because I realized that the French Revolution was just one of those times in history when the class structure was stripped away and the world was opened up – to a terrible chaos that eventually engulfed Europe in the schemes of one selfish “leader”. Times change and we can’t expect our world to go down the same path, yet there is so much that seems similar as feel the divisions rising.

What should we do about those people who feel a need to make everything into a statement of defiance against The Establishment? I’d like to give them all a hug and tell them that it’s going to be OK. Some of them I’d even like to join up with and see if we can’t come to some kind of agreement. The last thing I’d like to do is entertain them in a way that disengages their brains from thinking through how we all connect – there’s plenty of that already.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/07/13/raging-against-rage/feed/0angerwabbitoidTrade War Without Ammohttps://erikhare.com/2018/07/11/trade-war-without-ammo/
https://erikhare.com/2018/07/11/trade-war-without-ammo/#commentsWed, 11 Jul 2018 16:01:41 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8983The trade war is definitely on, no matter how Wall Street wants to deny it. Serious investors have downplayed recent events as part of a grand strategy, a negotiating tool that will all work out in the end. The reality, that there isn’t really a good strategy in place here but simply petty tactics, has not sunk in yet, at least in America. But the rest of the world knows better.

For the purposes of this discussion, the European Union will be diminished to Germany. After all, this is the economic engine that powers the continent right now, and Merkel’s leadership is critical. Where is Germany going? The long and short of it, the strategic and the tactical, is to the east. This response is proof enough that there is no US strategy which makes any sense.

Two boring technocrats who together make for an exciting time. Seriously.

The trade war is taking on the characteristics of the US against the world, which is to say that everyone has an interest in standing up to the US together. China is obviously the larger target in this dispute, which gives us the first and most immediate reason why Germany and China need to stay together: China is a great distraction for the US. As long as we are focused on issues with China, there is little time to worry about something as small as Germany.

It’s in Germany’s interests to encourage China to stand firm. A good way to do that is to provide a strong alternative by presenting greater access to the similar-sized EU economy.

China is moving higher tech and higher value added all the time.

But the relationship is not at all tactical, it’s for the long haul. That’s where the US hand is much weaker than the sheer volume of trade with China would suggest. American exports to China, like our imports, are heavily skewed to cheap, bulk items. We send them tons of soybeans, they send us a lot of plastic stuff. The value added is small and the number of jobs provided is equally paltry.

China, as a nation with an industrial policy, wants to move into higher value added technology based items, and it is doing so rapidly.

German engineering is without parallel in many key areas, particularly mechanical and systems engineering. China has a strong base in electronics and now heavy industry. They are a perfect match for each other and both sides know it. They each have what the other needs. In terms of markets, German has entry to a wealthy, developed market and China is just plain huge and developing.

In strategic terms, Germany and China have a lot to gain from each other for the long haul.

Where are all those containers going?

This is the main reason why the trade war, fought broadly around the world, is particularly stupid. If we had a war like this with China only it would be easy to justify and we would hold a far stronger hand. There are serious problems with Chinese protection of intellectual property and their currency is indeed undervalued by as much as 40%. Both of these are highly technical and systemic problems that are best solved without a trade war, but additional pressure could make them more urgent and force greater cooperation towards solving them.

The lack of such an effort shows that the US is not being strategic, but simply lashing out for a quick tactical advantage. The global nature of the trade war drives this point home.

How will the trade war go now that it is fully engaged? Badly. This can’t go well at all. At stake are 11 million US jobs tied to export, and they are all at risk. Importation of talent and capital is likely to dry up once the reality of this sinks in. When the rest of the developed world has to choose between the US and China the choice will gradually become more and more obvious – it has to be China.

We can’t win this war, at least not the way it is being fought. The growing industrial relationship between Germany and China shows exactly why.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/07/11/trade-war-without-ammo/feed/7Merkel XiwabbitoidThe Quality of Leadershiphttps://erikhare.com/2018/07/09/the-quality-of-leadership/
https://erikhare.com/2018/07/09/the-quality-of-leadership/#respondMon, 09 Jul 2018 14:28:18 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8980This is a post from ten years ago, back when the United States was at a fork in the road. Where are we now? I think that an extreme example of what I was talking about here in 2008 may cause a new generation to rise and finally solve the problem. Let’s see.

George Washington was known primarily for being fearless. When his men had circled around and were accidentally firing on each other, he drew his sabre and rode between the line of rifles, fiercely cutting them down. When he needed a win badly, he risked freezing to death by crossing the Delaware to surprise the Hessians camped in New Jersey.

Watching over us

Abraham Lincoln was a man of a few carefully chosen words. When his opponent Stephen Douglas went on for hours speaking against the evils of slavery, Lincoln would respond with little more than “A house divided against itself cannot stand”. It was that simple. We were a family, but we would not be if we continued this way. Lincoln made the stakes clear to everyone.

Susan B. Anthony was, as a woman, not allowed to vote. In 1872, she voted anyway, declaring that it was her right to do so. At her trial, she spoke clearly to this point, and got off with only a small fine and a boost to the growing women’s rights campaign. It was not the last time she got in the way of the authorities, either.

George Washington Carver may be known as a scientist, but he proudly introduced himself as a farmer. He routinely went out into the country to talk with other farmers and help them to implement the plans in his brochures. Carver took their concerns back to his lab so that he could work on things that mattered most to the other “people of the soil”.

You couldn’t stop her.

What do all of these people have in common? They are all Americans, and they have all been made into icons that are larger than life. Each, as a marbleized statue, illuminates the American concept of leadership, which includes courage, clarity, determination, dedication.

Look around today and ask yourself where you see these qualities of leadership in the people who have made it to the highest levels of power today. In government and business, the story is the same – our leadership has remarkably little of the qualities that made the American Empire in the first place. Certainly, there are millions of people who are courageous and clear in purpose, who are determined and dedicated, working away to make things happen everywhere. But very few achieve real power.

I’ve blogged before about the state of leadership in this country. I chalked it up to a particular kind of stupidity that comes from arrogance. With more consideration, I think the problem is much deeper. How did we get where we are today?

George Washington Carver is one of the greatest scientists who ever lived, period.

There is little doubt that the American Empire, built by the qualities of leadership I’ve listed, is at the height of its power. What can possibly challenge us? There is only one thing that brings down Empires, and it is their own inability to remain true to what made them in the first place.

People who achieved positions of power used to understand the need to collaborate and work together, gathering the best and brightest around them; our system forced consensus and compromise at nearly all levels. Not so today. The power that is up for grabs in every election and every corporate management became much greater and more concentrated once we achieved the status of a planet-ruling Empire. Leaders gradually became distrustful and self-centered. Their courage melted and their clarity faded as they came to believe their own bullshit. Determination became arrogance and dedication collapsed into selfishness.

The people that created the American Empire never intended for it to be this way. The system that they crafted was based on a real and genuine leadership to serve the people. It became wildly successful because they were right. But they also knew enough to fear concentration of power even as they accidentally created a power that went outside of their system to run the lives of people all around the globe, people who have no say in how the power is used at all.

Is this how the American Empire ends? If it’s the end of the Empire part, I’m all for it. America by Americans for Americans can be a good thing once again, but only if we start to insist on the qualities of leadership that made everything around us possible. Our power is something that we often equate with a good life made up of cheap imported oil and consumer goods. As that comes to an end, we need to re-evaluate what the good life is made of and what America has contributed to the world. It’s not plastic crap. It’s a vision of leadership that boldly serves. We must insist on that far, far more than we insist on cheap gasoline.

In a democracy, we get the leadership we deserve. We once deserved a lot better than we do right now.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/07/09/the-quality-of-leadership/feed/0AnthonywabbitoidGlobal, Yes, Domination, No!https://erikhare.com/2018/07/06/global-yes-domination-no/
https://erikhare.com/2018/07/06/global-yes-domination-no/#commentsFri, 06 Jul 2018 14:58:46 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8973Sneering at “globalists” has become an instinct among many Trump supporters. It was globalism that ruined this nation, they argued, and the only way to make America great again is to cut off the rest of the world. On the other side, there is an almost equally instinctual support for immigration and trade as much out of tradition as it is the thinly held belief that the system in place obviously made the nation strong.

Where is the truth? Like most debates, somewhere in the middle – or just off to the side a little. America is wealthier and better as part of the world, but the expense of trying to run the planet and tell everyone what to do is killing us. More to the point, it’s falling on working people who are expected to support it as a vanity project and chant “U-S-A!” while the benefits accrue to those with a lot more money to start with.

It can be changed. It has to be changed. It will change – either by design or by collapse.

It may seem strange to think of the US Dollar as nothing more than another product, but that’s what it is. It goes up and down with supply and demand like anything else, at least as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

How much more? By comparing ourselves with Europe, an equally developed trade partner, we can see that the Dollar is valued about 8.4% higher and the trade deficit is about 8.4% as a result. We can reasonably assume that there would be about the same amount more sold if we didn’t export Dollars as much as we do but instead made manufactured goods.

There would be more jobs here without dominance.

Currently, about 11 million jobs in the US come from exports, so there would be about 900,000 more jobs if the US Dollar was not the currency standard. That would have lower the unemployment rate about 0.6%. More importantly, many of those jobs would be in manufacturing and thus high-paying. Many would be in Ohio and Michigan, the industrial heartland.

At the US average rate for manufacturing jobs of $21.39 per hour, this is about $40 billion per year.

If that seems like a lot of money, consider this – it’s all borrowed anyway. Take a look at this chart of the deficit, turned to a positive, in red with defense spending in blue:

Deficit in red, defense in blue. Our deficit is well defined by our defense spending.

Notice that outside of the deepest part of the last Depression our deficit has been always just a little bit less than our defense spending since 1973. In essence, the cost of telling the world to do what we say or else we’ll shoot has been financed by selling bonds to the rest of the world bearing discount interest. It makes it all sound a little more like robbery put that way, but who is really stuck with the bill?

Given that it’s largely being put on the American Visa Card, it’s our kids that are stuck with it.

All this stuff is expensive.

Does this mean that globalism carries with it a huge price tag that we just can’t afford? It certainly does to the extent that we have to dominate the planet. Between the net loss of jobs due to our love of being the world currency, which is to say the ability to buy cheap stuff at Wal-Mart, and the cost of maintaining a ridiculous defense infrastructure working people in America are very much getting stiffed with the bill for it all.

Either we find a way to tax the very wealthy to support this or, a better idea, accept that dominating the world is simply too expensive for us to continue. It’s one or the other. By that, I mean that this can’t continue forever and it does indeed have to stop. Either we do it graciously and gradually or something will fall apart. It is simply a matter of time.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/07/06/global-yes-domination-no/feed/1dollarwabbitoidThe Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of Americahttps://erikhare.com/2018/07/04/the-unanimous-declaration-of-the-thirteen-united-states-of-america/
https://erikhare.com/2018/07/04/the-unanimous-declaration-of-the-thirteen-united-states-of-america/#respondWed, 04 Jul 2018 14:30:52 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8969When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/07/04/the-unanimous-declaration-of-the-thirteen-united-states-of-america/feed/0founding-fatherswabbitoidFall of the Republic – Rome & US?https://erikhare.com/2018/07/02/fall-of-the-republic-rome-us/
https://erikhare.com/2018/07/02/fall-of-the-republic-rome-us/#commentsMon, 02 Jul 2018 16:08:11 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8959Whenever the United States fall into strife, quips and stories about the fall of Rome follow naturally. If Rome fell, why not the US? Indeed, it’s quite logical given that no empire in the history of the planet has ever been permanent. Nations with a long imperial heritage, particularly Egypt and China, were not only reconstituted from scratch several times they both have rejected imperial trappings today.

There is a more interesting period of Roman history, however, which is when it transformed from a Republic to an Empire. It’s a topic shrouded in complex political machinations that become difficult to understand. But they are indeed worth knowing.

“Cicero Accuses Catiline,” by Cesare Maccari . It is a depiction of the Roman Senate in operation.

The official chronology is very well fixed. The Roman Republic lasted from 504 BCE to 27 BCE and not a minute less. It started with the overthrow of the last king, Tarquinus Superbus, in 504 BCE. When he was overthrown, the Senate took control in a tribal arrangement with the heads of families. Executive power was given to two Consuls, elected by the Senate, who operated with complete legal immunity for a term of one year.

This was the first attempt to run a large kingdom with a power-sharing arrangement, so its limitations are natural. But they were a source of constant strain which grew as the Republic did.

Numidian light cavalry, under the command of Hannibal.

There were two significant threats to the Republic during this time, and how they were dispatched were the sword and shield of its eventual downfall. The Republic was quite small, essentially the lower two thirds of Italy, when it came into conflict with Carthage in what is now Tunisia. The bitter struggles between them, known as the Punic Wars, lasted from 264 to 146 BCE. Despite some unimaginable defeats at the hands of Carthaginian general Hannibal, Rome eventually won.

With that victory came Spain, North Africa, and all of the Western Mediterranean. The Republic was outgrowing its original charter dramatically.

With a new lust for conquest, the Republic turned on the weak remnants of Greece almost immediately. Constant expansion became the norm and it was a great time to be Roman. But this naturally left the soldiers and poor people wondering what their share of spoils was going to be. If this sounds familiar, it should. The complaint of “Rich man’s war, poor man’s fight” is essentially constant throughout history, especially with the strong warrior traditions integral to the Western world.

As Rome became richer, the distribution of the spoils of war became a serious strain.

Gaius Gracchus addressing the people of Rome.

One of the rarely discussed features of Rome is the Plebian Council, a body elected by the poor people left out of the Senate – which is to say, the vast majority. Most of the time it served as a rubber-stamp body despite its power to veto new laws passed by the Senate. In 133 BCE, Tiberius Gracchus was elected Tribune of the Plebs or the head of this body. His status as a war hero and calls for land for veterans made him a popular choice.

Tiberius pushed as hard as he could for land reform, a literal piece of the conquest for those who took it. He was ultimately murdered by a mob who were in opposition to the radical changes he proposed. His brother Gaius took up the cause, but he, too, was murdered in 123 BCE. That supposedly was the end of that.

There are many ways to study this period, but some excellent videos are probably the easiest. For more information on the Gracchi Brothers, as they are known, this video makes an excellent starting point It’s worth a solid 15 minutes of your time to understand what happened.

This was not the end of calls for reform, however. A young Senator of noble birth, Julius Caesar, started pushing for the same reforms. He was elected Consul in 60 BCE and immediately the Senate became polarize. After his one year term, Caesar was sent off to be governor of Gaul, southern France today, and his supporters were left to fight as a faction without him. Through a series of brilliant maneuvers and the ability to raise his own armies, over the next eight years Caesar conquered all of Gaul, today’s France, and developed immense power away from Rome.

The strain was only increasing.

Caesar was eligible to be re-elected as Consul after ten year hiatus, and the conquest of Gaul only increased the alarm of the conservative faction. Reformers were eager for him to return and lead the charge. Various laws were put in place to serve as roadblocks to Caesar’s return and the entire operation of the Senate gradually devolved from reform to “The Caesar Question.” He was blocked from returning, but did so anyway. In 49 BCE Caesar brought one of his armies into Italy proper, crossing the Rubicon river with them in open violation of Roman law.

This event is also best explained in another video from a different source. If you have a lot of time and wish to understand Rome, there are many others from youtube channel Historia Civilis that I strongly recommend. But this one on Caesar is good for these purposes. It is longer, but worth it.

After a horrible civil war, Caesar consolidated power and became the Dictator of Rome. It seems like the end of the Republic, but it was not officially. When Caesar was murdered in the Senate in 44 BCE, the Senate attempted to pretend everything was back to normal. It was not. Attempts at power sharing were cobbled together, but when Egypt was taken through a series of political maneuvers and a military campaign the strain created by even higher stakes was too high. Octavian (aka Augustus) took control in 27 BCE with the title Princeps, later referring to himself as “Imperator Caesar.” He ruled alone, with complete control, and the Senate was deprecated to a rubber-stamp body much like the Plebian Council.

Octavian Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome.

The Republic was officially, finally, gone.

The parallels with the United States today are more than simply obvious, many of them are by design. The Founding Fathers of the US were very well versed in the history of Rome and understood how the Republic slouched its way into Empire. Power sharing, particularly checks on executive power, were seen as critical to blocking an American Caesar.

In general, the fall of the Roman Republic is attributed to these factors, all of which we can see deliberately dealt with in some fashion by the Founding Fathers of the United States:

The gradual assumption of the trappings of Empire, which put strain on political institutions.

The lack of a strong rule of law, or the use of law as a tool for control rather than creation of order.

The independence of the military and the use of force as a political tool.

The lack of basic rights for all citizens.

The lack of effective political outlets for reform generally.

The lack of democracy, or direct input into by the people, due to an ineffective Plebian Council.

The Founding Fathers knew exactly what they were doing. But they weren’t sure if it would work.

If this sounds familiar, it should. Before there is a republic, democratic or otherwise, there has to be the absolute rule of law. Our presidency is designed to have very specific checks on its power in the form of institutions and elections for a very good reason. Subsequent generations after the Founders only reinforced this as the quest for increasing civil right came to define American political history.

But there was still the growth of Empire, or the spirit of one, regardless of the structure. And the spoils of empire are never distributed evenly.

Is the United States a republic or an empire? We are a Republic, certainly, but in terms of operation we have come to look more and more like an Empire. This was ultimately what caused the Roman Republic to collapse, not on one specific date but gradually as the amount of control it exercised grew beyond the ability of its political institutions to manage them. Their Senate became useless not through decree but through its own petty squabbles and a greater favor to personal power over the stability of the institution itself.

We can see all of this happening now. As Barataria has said many times, history does not repeat but it does rhyme like a street poet hitting the downbeat. The lessons of the fall of Rome are well worth understanding, and not the fall of the Roman Empire. The fall of the Republic was more complex but, to ordinary citizens and to history, much more devastating.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/07/02/fall-of-the-republic-rome-us/feed/5SenatewabbitoidFly the Flaghttps://erikhare.com/2018/06/29/fly-the-flag-5/
https://erikhare.com/2018/06/29/fly-the-flag-5/#commentsFri, 29 Jun 2018 14:05:19 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8957I have run this story for Independence Day many times. I feel that this year the message is even more important.

The misunderstandings and suspicions melted away, as they always do, after a few litres of liquid bread that the Germans call “Bier”. Harald was very honest in his German way, a kind of honesty that was spelled out in long, silent pauses as much as words. “With all of these different people and cultures, what is it that makes you Americans?”

I swallowed my beer to give me time, and the perfect answer came to me:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It was answered with another Teutonic silence, but the moment clearly demanded more from him. Harald dutifully complied.

“So that is it? If you believe that, you are an American?”
“Yes, I think that’s it. It’s our catechism.”
“So it is more a faith than a culture?”
“Yes, I’d say so.”
“Interesting.”

I could tell that he wasn’t buying it, at least not for himself. But he had to respect a direct answer, and did.

in the 1990s, I worked for six weeks in a small town in Germany where very few people had ever seen an American before. Burghausen is a place where everyone more or less knows everyone else, going back into the mists of time when their ancestors arrived. I stood out without opening my mouth long enough to flub simple sentence construction in their harsh yet strangely cute language.

Listening in German was closer to my skill level, so I was forced to do that a lot. One day I came to a the breakroom just as Harald was laughing about the latest directive from the US corporate office. Part of it really broke him up.

It’s an American thang.

“With Americans, there are no problems, only opportunities.” he said with a laugh. My colleagues kept laughing until I told them, “Yes, that’s right. Optimism is at the core of what we believe.” And there was silence. The previous conversation over beer was sinking in. They probably thought we were hopelessly naïve, but it all at least made sense.

That was my life as an outsider in a very small town in Germany. I came to be known as “Der Ami” or the American because, simply, I was the only one many people had met in person.

Knowing I might represent my country to so many people, I became very careful. I took to calling it “Flying the Flag,” some self-aggrandizement born of loneliness and a little homesickness. I did my best to dress well, tip well, and take a joke or snide comment with grace. I also did my best to answer any and all questions honestly and completely. I wanted the good Volk of Burghausen to know that me and my people are at least decent.

Independence was deliverance, and a reason to give thanks. But so were our precious civil liberties.

At work, I had to try a bit harder. The locals were one thing, but my colleagues and I were forced by circumstance to share a little more. Harald was especially fun not because of his warmth or charm but because of his skepticism. He forced me to think and explain.

I’m happy that I took my role as self-appointed ambassador so seriously. I still believe that to “Fly the Flag” is more than just hanging out a piece of cloth on a pole – it’s the process of living up to both the common standards of decency and our highest ideals. It’s not exactly easy, but it’s absolutely essential. We are a people, and unlike so many other people that are defined by land and language we are defined by what we believe in. If we let our ideals down, we let our nation down.

It might sound like just another bar story between two colleagues who were forced by circumstance to understand each other. To me, it became a mirror. I’m not only a better person for it, I’m a better American. I hope we all have the chance to represent our nation sometime, even if just at some bar in a far corner of Germany. Holidays like Independence Day have much more meaning when you’ve tried to really fly the flag.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/06/29/fly-the-flag-5/feed/2flagwabbitoidflagIt's an American thang.Independence was deliverance, and a reason to give thanks. But so were our precious civil liberties.“Victim”https://erikhare.com/2018/06/27/victim/
https://erikhare.com/2018/06/27/victim/#commentsWed, 27 Jun 2018 15:31:24 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8948Very few words carry the weight of “victim” in today’s world. Most of its power, however, comes from not being spoken directly. It is a term for a concept that must lurk in the shadows, a mugger ready to rob you or a secret that dare not be exposed, all in the name of social status.

It may seem strange for a middle-aged pale male of great privilege to write about the word victim. But that is actually the point in the end. Many people just like me have assumed the trappings of victimhood and attempt to use it as an armor in battle, Joan of Arc style. How did this come about, and how does it work?

More to the point, why on earth does this work?

Joan d’Arc. Holy warrior and martyr. Not a “victim.”

The word “victim” has a strange origin. It comes from the Latin word victima, “a person killed in a sacrifice.” It was about 300 years ago that it first was used to describe those oppressed by a power. The most common usage, someone taken advantage of, is the newest.

Its usage is consistent but carries a subtle bias. When the US bombs something in an act of war, there may be civilian casualties. ISIS, on the other hand, always creates victims through its attacks. The word is to describe the victims of natural disasters where a generation ago the term casualty was much more common.

True to its roots, there is an implied innocence in the word victim. It is also an infinitive verb in that one is a victim, in contrast to the privilege one has. Since the past tense is the same as the present, linguistically once someone is a victim they are always a victim. Everything about the word is personal, defining identity, and that is the source of its power.

The power is so strong that it is usually wielded without speaking the name of it.

People who were victimized by the action of another person, such as a crime, tend to have a particular attitude towards the concept. “I refuse to be a victim!” is a common statement, which is to say that they refuse to let the actions of a perpetrator define them. Reactions such as fear, distrust, and hatred are actively worked out or pushed aside in a rejection of the personal definition of self implied by the word victim. The word is rejected and very deliberately not used.

This is not true in the social sense of the word when the supposed perpetrator is a more nameless society at large. The opposite of victimization is empowerment, a term that was very popular just a few years ago but is hardly used today at all. Yet so is the word “victim.” The concepts of victimhood, as a personal identification, are used very freely, but the very loaded word itself is avoided. The most common form is a very pointed question with the innocence of a child, such as “If they can do this, why can’t we?’

Even at a more personal level, the language of victimization is common even though the word itself is not. A personal encounter that includes rebuke is described in words which dance around victimization such as “attack.” The person at the receiving end often describes the event in the kind of detail that is best left for a court deposition to ram the point home.

Some time ago, “empowerment” was the name of the game. It permeated common culture.

This kind of behavior is the opposite of empowerment in every sense of the word. It is used by people who have privilege as well as those who do not. The language of victimization is also used by those in power to condescend to those without, essentially saying that oppression is a permanent condition so you need to be used to it. The personal nature of being a victim is forcibly loaded into the identity of self in a way that reinforces existing social power structures.

Some of the problems that the US has with a rising culture of victimhood have a lot to do with the complete lack of formal boundaries between self and social. Though there is considerable variation across the nation, in general we are a very open people. We use first names casually and tell our life story, or a sanitized version of it, in encounters with strangers.

Because of this lack of a filter or wall, social status can be extremely important to the definition of self. A diminished social status is a characteristic of victimhood, and internalizing it makes it the infinitive sense of being. In many ways this is the culmination of the most American concept of freely expressing yourself, letting the freak flag fly. On the other hand, it is taking the world’s reaction to it to heart.

We all deserve respect, we all deserve privilege. Together we can build up, not tear down. But we must choose that path very deliberately.

The generalized version of the common declaration, “Refuse to be a victim,” is considered offensive sometimes. If a privileged person like me says it to someone with less privilege, it is inherently judgmental. But the concept, that society should never define you in a negative way, is a core American value.

The word victim, or more accurately the concept of being a victim without daring to speak its name, has achieved unique power in America today. It is bundled in a series of “you” statements and “you people” accusations that have entirely replaced factual and empowering “I” statements.

Victimhood defines much of our social interaction and nearly all of the distilled social liquor known as politics. Like all alcoholic spirits, it is easy to become not only drunk but addicted and eventually truly helpless in its throes. We are long past the need for an intervention to put a stop to this and to force our social interaction to stop blaming others.

Either we empower ourselves to turn it around or we give in to a higher power. That is the original meaning of the word, after all – a sacrifice. Rather than constantly playing the martyr and putting ourselves up for sacrifice let’s offer up something not so innocent and very powerful. Let’s ritually bleed out the concept of victimhood on the altar of empowerment and be done with it.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/06/27/victim/feed/2Joan d'ArcwabbitoidFact-Based Policyhttps://erikhare.com/2018/06/25/fact-based-policy/
https://erikhare.com/2018/06/25/fact-based-policy/#commentsMon, 25 Jun 2018 15:42:46 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8940There isn’t any actual crisis in immigration. If that sentence surprises or infuriates, you’re probably paying far too much attention to the news. The situation which has the entire nation worked into a frenzy was entirely made up for political purposes.

Nevermind all that. We have a crisis on our hands because for one dumb reason or another Trumplandia thought it would suit them. Let’s look at facts and see if there is something more calm and human that can and should be done.

Logic. Facts. Things that are supposed to rule our world.

All I have ever really asked for is fact-based policy. The most significant problem we have in politics as we know it is that each side seems to have their own set of “facts.” There is no doubt that immigration policy is riddled with problems, and that most have been festering for a long time. But if we look at the reality of the situation we can see even more clearly that the current crisis is not only manufactured but totally counter-productive.

It may seem cold to insist on facts first. Isn’t there a place for empathy, for taking care of those in pain and fear? The long and short of it is that suffering comes from the earthly realm, and understanding suffering in a way that truly allows us to help it, to break it has to start with reality. High ideals do not fill bellies or heal the sick. Big words from university studies do not unite in love to end racism and injustice like simple words from the heart.

Facts are kind because facts acknowledge and facts validate. And these are the facts on immigration:

America is bigger than you or I can ever imagine. But we need to try to imagine how big it is once again. That used to inspire us.

Immigrants are not criminals. Every study that has looked at the issues has shown that immigrants, including the undocumented, are more peaceful than the general population. The rate of violent crime is about half the general population, not just low but very low.

There is no path to legal residency, let alone citizenship. Before the law was changed in 1997, any undocumented person here more than five years could apply for permanent residency. Keep in mind that this means no encounter with the law during that time, as anyone convicted of a gross misdemeanor or a felony would have been deported. That is not the case. It is estimated that 9 million of the 11 million undocumented immigrants have been here more than 5 years. Under the old law, they could have applied to stay, but currently they cannot.

There is no crisis other than the one created by the US government. Period. That is what the facts very clearly tell us no matter how you look at them. While that is disheartening, it shows that once there is some kind of rational leadership in this nation the problems can be fixed.

Of course, we are not in a position to simply let everyone into the nation Ellis Island style. But sensible limits based on skills or, in the case of asylum seekers, sheer desperation is completely reasonable. Consider for a moment a market-based system for allowing people into the US.

Such a system could be tied to the unemployment rate for the overall number of visas. Quotas by nation, which can only be called racist, could be replaced with quotas by skill or education level. Employer sponsored visas, which encourage a kind of slavery tied to employment, could be dispensed to promote independence.

There is no limit to what we can do if we pay attention to facts, for once, and not let emotion and nonsense run our immigration policy. There is no crisis, there is only a need for genuine leadership.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/06/25/fact-based-policy/feed/8Statue ChildwabbitoidDrama Queenhttps://erikhare.com/2018/06/22/drama-queen/
https://erikhare.com/2018/06/22/drama-queen/#commentsFri, 22 Jun 2018 14:59:32 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8938You can dance, You can jive,Having the time of your life.Ooh, see that girl, watch that sceneDiggin’ the dancing queen.– “Dancing Queen” (ABBA)

The dominant feature of the Trump administration is chaos. It is designed to entertain, to provoke, but primarily to keep everyone busy. And it is designed. Make no mistake about it, being a Drama Queen is a big part of the process of gaslighting.

Ingrid Bergman in George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944).

Gaslighting is not necessarily a deliberate act among predatory psychopaths, but it is an instinct. It is not something that they actually plan and think out most of the time, but rather something that comes from the guts. It is driven by a need to be in control and at the center of attention at all times. With many years of practice, some of them become good at it.

Over many years, Trump has found that he has a natural ability to manipulate people. He does it by appearing to be calm in the center of a storm, a time when people naturally look to strong leaders for guidance. He is skilled at not only manipulating chaos, but also creating it for this purpose.

In short, he is a raging Drama Queen.

If you look at any of the issues occupying the time on CNN, you will notice a pattern. None of them are remotely real in any significant sense. Every single one of them was created for the purpose of creating drama and effectively keeping channels like CNN very busy.

They bought it, and the net result is that CNN and its hapless audience are made into victims.

Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock. The secret to the con is earnest looking drama.

The nation as a whole are victims of this process, too, but many of us are working to keep our sanity. It is difficult to do so around a Drama Queen like Trump, but it is vital. There are those who will tell you that the issues are real, that there actually is a border crisis, a tariff crisis, and whatever else it is that we have playing out right now. There are always issues in these areas, but are they really the most important problems facing ordinary Americans right now? Is forcing a crisis really going to help the American people?

Of course it won’t. A crisis is being created in these areas because it helps the Drama Queen. They are more important than actual real crises such as the skills gap, the opiod epidemic, or Puerto Rico reconstruction only because they are small enough to be managed by the Drama Queen for his own effect.

Ultimately, the goal is to keep the population in line through fear. Chaos is frightening to people who are simply trying to get through the day and raise a family. What will come next? Can we really count on tomorrow being like today? These are the kinds of questions that raise anxiety and keep people up at night. Through the fear generated, they are expected to find a strong leader to guide them. That is the Drama Queen’s ultimate goal – to politicize everything along his personal lines.

The only thing we can do with a Drama Queen is to walk away. The only thing we can do is to leave the scene, let the Drama Queen dance around and impress everyone that is stupid enough to stay.

But make no mistake, Trump is nothing more than a Drama Queen in the end.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/06/22/drama-queen/feed/4mostelzerowabbitoidThe Road To Hellhttps://erikhare.com/2018/06/20/the-road-to-hell/
https://erikhare.com/2018/06/20/the-road-to-hell/#commentsWed, 20 Jun 2018 15:25:41 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8929There is no excuse for the current policy at the US border with Mexico. It was indeed changed by the current administration in April, regardless of how Trump tries do deny responsibility. His Attorney General and Homeland Security Secretary don’t run from it.

But while there is no excuse for this policy, it is important to note that it is not particularly different from the horrors that our immigration laws have inflicted for at least a generation, if not longer. It is indeed an attempt to fully enforce existing law, a series of laws never fully put into place because they do indeed violate basic human rights. Never enforced, that is, until now.

The current violations of decency and due process highlight a dance that the US has long had with human rights violations. When the music stops it is long past time for us to review not just this policy but every aspect of immigration and border control.

America is bigger than you or I can ever imagine. We need to try to imagine it, however. That used to inspire us.

Anyone encountering Customs or ICE is having a bad day, regardless of who they are. When a border or immigration action is declared, all constitutional rights are effectively gone. You have no right to privacy, and everything can be searched. There is no fourth amendment. You can be held immediately, as the probable cause for suspecting you is simply being there at that moment.

This holds true for US citizens, legal residents, and those without documentation alike. One example of how impossible they are to deal with occurred in 1982 when nearly all of Monroe County, Florida, was held hostage by a “border check” on US1. The result was that Key West declared itself an independent nation in a desperate bid for publicity and help. The Conch Republic was born.

But that was nothing compared to what has been in the works since 1996. There was a large spike in migration from Mexico at that time, fueled by a serious agricultural crisis driven by agricultural mechanization and major economic reform. Millions were without work, especially those whose farm jobs were lost to machines. They came northward in a wave.

Current human rights abuses are a culmination of years of policy, not anything new.

The bill made it easier to deport people and much harder for anyone to ever become an American citizen. The reason why there are so many people who have been in the US for 10-20 years without documentation, estimated to be over 60% of the 11M undocumented, is that there is no path to citizenship for them. The 1996 law closed them all down.

At the borders, things have also become much worse. Detention for nearly indefinite periods awaiting verification of status is common, even for those seeking asylum and supposedly protected by treaty obligations. Deportations have been rising more or less constantly since that time, especially for Mexicans.

Deportations to Mexico. The net change in 1996 is very clear.

Since 2008, immigration from Mexico has slowed down as their economy stabilized. Today’s immigrants are from Central America, escaping violence in the region. Their situation is more dire and their journey to come here much longer. The process they are encountering is indeed less respectful of their basic human dignity, but it is not as much worse as it is commonly portrayed. Even without this new policy, they would be detained, treated like garbage, and probably deported.

What is the solution to this? In the short term, we must be more respectful and kinder. But in the long term the only solution is a North American one.

Together. It will be different.

History shows that a rich nation cannot remain stable when it has poor neighbors. It must either absorb them or give them opportunities to stay at home. It may sound appealing to place great machines of enforcement on the border staffed by people in uniforms, but this never works indefinitely. It certainly is not possible for any nation which is humane, decent, and a genuine beacon of freedom for the world.

Until we truly love our neighbors as we love ourselves, there will be problems like this. And there will be horrors if we cannot treat situations which arise with love. What is happening now rightfully reminds everyone of the Nazi era. But we came here from a place not as far away as you might think, and we came here quite willingly. Everything has to change to genuinely put a stop to this.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/06/20/the-road-to-hell/feed/7Statue ChildwabbitoidEpidemic of Lieshttps://erikhare.com/2018/06/18/epidemic-of-lies/
https://erikhare.com/2018/06/18/epidemic-of-lies/#commentsMon, 18 Jun 2018 15:09:10 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8926This piece is from 2011. Was I naive or prophetic?

According to author James Stewart, lying is a national crisis. This undermines “the ideals of fair play, integrity, and trust to which people of goodwill everywhere aspire,” according to the author, and he’s made a good career out of speaking on this topic. His book “Tangled Webs” is selling well.

But is lying worse than it ever has been, as Steward insists? I think so, but at a slightly different depth than he has plumbed.

This article was written long before public and political lying became completely pathological.

There is little doubt that much of our world is based on lies. There isn’t an economic stat that doesn’t have a bit of fudge hidden in it somewhere to make the picture look a bit better. Politicians routinely say things that don’t actually make any sense, such as the famed “Ground Zero Mosque” that was neither at Ground Zero nor a Mosque. Corporations routinely keep several sets of books, one for the taxman and one for the investment world, showing different definitions of “profit” where one has to be a lie.

But there is more to it than that, I think.

Consider for a moment different kinds of lies that surround us. There is the directly, objectively false statement that can be shown to be incorrect that Stewart’s book uses as its underpinning, giving examples of Bernie Madoff, Barry Bonds, Martha Stewart, and Scooter Libby. But these seem quite rare.

When complete BS doesn’t win an argument, the next step is shouting. These are playground rules, but they are what we live by.

Then, there is what we might call BS, or (CowPuckey) as I tried to euphemistically refer to it. That’s when someone says something that is not a direct lie because it has no relationship with the truth whatsoever. The speaker doesn’t care if it is true – and only makes the statement because it advances their cause. It’s pretty easy to spot most of the time because if it sounds too stupid to be true, it probably is. Michelle Bachmann does this nearly constantly.

But even with the epidemic of (CowPuckey), I don’t think that’s the most corrosive problem yet. There are many examples of a simple kernal of something definitely, provably true that have been ripped entirely from their context to prove a point that ultimately makes no sense at all.

For example, a lot of people reasonably concerned about government spending have lately been crossing many lines and started insisting that FDR’s New Deal actually made the Great Depression worse, or that Obama has done the same, based on economic performance immediately after the policies were adopted. No one could reasonably believe that an economy as large as ours turns around in just a few years, but genuinely true data is show outside of that context as proof that those working on the problem are incompetent.

The blatant lies are rare because everyone knows they might be checked out at some point. Most people still value their reputation or at least fear more direct punishment like jail time. There is still some level of personal responsibility for what we all say and do.

The other kinds of lies, (CowPuckey) and contextual lies, are based on isolation. A line of BS has, at its core, a lack of personal connection between people that comes from the speaker’s cavalier disregard for the intelligence of their listener. It is inherently selfish or even narcissistic. Factoids ripped from context are ideas disconnected from other ideas and provable facts, a more subtle type of disconnection because it is so impersonal. Want to check it out? It will take digging to make a case – and often a paragraph to counter a single sentence.

If there is an epidemic of lies, as I think there is, James Stewart hardly scratched the surface of the problem. His examples are all of people who lied openly and paid a price for their falsehoods. They are personal problems much more than they are cultural failings.

Lies as we have come to know them are nothing more than a symptom of a social structure that is falling apart, deeply disconnected and wallowing in selfishness.

Some of this is understandable, given the rapid rate of change and inability of most people to maintain a steady control over their own lives. But no matter what, the only real cure for a culture based on lies is to start understanding its own connections and how nothing actually happens in isolation any longer.

Lying is just one side of a pair of dice that have printed on them many social ills – including failing government, lack of business ethics, broken families, and lack of common courtesy. Only a loser puts these into the air and think there’s any way they’ll come out ahead. That lie, one of self-delusion, is another problem altogether.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/06/18/epidemic-of-lies/feed/1Image: President Trump Signs Executive Order In Oval OfficewabbitoidInspirationhttps://erikhare.com/2018/06/15/inspiration/
https://erikhare.com/2018/06/15/inspiration/#commentsFri, 15 Jun 2018 14:30:25 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8924This summer re-run is from six years ago. Way back then, I actually thought we could confront the narcissism that has been taking over our culture. Silly me.

The tidbits of popular inspiration roll through twitter and facebook in a nearly constant stream. You want your stuff retweeted or shared through the networks? Come up with a bit of folk enlightenment, maybe put it into a jpg pic as a “meme” (horrible mis-use of that word!). Keep it simple – a quick saying or maybe a set of “tips” devoid of heavy philosophy that could wear down a bizzy day. It could be a Bible verse or a simple admonishment to be a more decent person.

There’s nothing wrong with this sort of stuff, and it probably has been present throughout the history of human interaction. But the volume and popularity of these sorts of things leads me to wonder if there isn’t a hunger for spirituality and connection that is missing from the ordinary grind of the day. There appears to be a missing presence in the moment, a sense that ghosts float past our conscience whispering a calling to be a better part of the world.

This is the kind of Romanticism that I find missing in the life that we have beyond the Existential world of twentieth century “modernism”. The detachment of Meursault, protagonist in Camus’ “The Stranger”, is found wanting and largely irrelevant to most people even as our culture is defined by the selfishness that this philosophy inevitably had to implode into. Novels and other works of art that should be defining our culture instead try to define the individual, the hero, as a lone actor doing what they must and forcing the world to conform to their own interior view.

Longtime readers will understand that I constantly sneer at narcissism and its place in popular culture. It does seem to define huge hunks of the developed world, at least, even as the developing world gets its own act together to become something much bigger. But anyone can complain – coming up with an alternative is where it has a chance at becoming useful.

Or, if we do it right, a movement. Perhaps even the definition of the next vision of our own culture.

My first offering was heavily Christian, and I’ve been working to redefine it as Exstasism, the practice of living outside of yourself. It’s not for everyone, it turns out, and I’ve learned just how hard this process can be for many people. But the principle is fairly obvious in its own way – it’s not all about you, it’s just not that kind of party.

There’s a pithy, tweetable phrase. Put that below an iconic pic and maybe we have something.

I’ve had several conversations along these lines lately, and I want to engage those of you who I have yet to meet in this ongoing multilogue of thought. What it boils down to is a re-invention of “self” not only as the only viable vantage point any honest person can confess to, but a being that is engaged in a world where the cultural motives and intellectual heritage at the other end of any daily engagement can’t be done with any presumption. Pithy sayings aside, not everyone we run into has the same values any of us do.

The resulting confusion, the “cognitive dissonance”, floods through all of our lives in a torrent that leaves nearly everyone just a shade autistic and beyond coping. I think there is indeed a greater need for pithy folk spiritualism, if only to tell people to stop and be fully into a quick moment sprinkled into a hectic day.

What does that mean for someone who wants to carve out a living as a practitioner or craftsman working their skills in politics, literature, or economics? It seems that what is being called for is a sense of connection, or at least a way that there is something beyond the celebrated self of the greater culture around us. There does appear to be a longing for something a little bit more, though it is often expressed as a personal appeal to strength and not a calling to serve the rest of the world.

What matters is that people are grabbing onto inspirational sayings because they appear to need them. Why is that? It should be obvious in a time of terrific change and harsh depravation. But then again, it may not be. There appears to be something beyond the material, a set of aspirations calling us all away from a materially defined world into something held tighter in any given moment.

A Romantic can hope, at least. What do you think? Need more background? Just follow links and I hope you’ll feel rewarded.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/06/15/inspiration/feed/1EscherSPwabbitoidEscherSPAppeasementhttps://erikhare.com/2018/06/13/appeasement/
https://erikhare.com/2018/06/13/appeasement/#commentsWed, 13 Jun 2018 14:30:13 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8920When Neville Chamberlain returned from the Munich Conference with Adolf Hitler in September 1938, he believed he had an answer to his primary question. “What does Mr. Hitler want?” was on the mind of the Prime Minister going into the meeting, and it colored all of the proceedings.

The perception was that Germany was wronged in the Versailles Treaty and that Hitler, as the leader, was simply acting in his own nation’s interest. Chamberlain completely neglected the growing body of evidence that Hitler was indeed a psychopath who had his own interests in mind and was simply using Germany as a tool.

Diplomacy is always complicated, but with such people it is even moreso. More than seeking the right answers, it often becomes critical to ask the right questions in the first place.

“Peace in our time.” It takes much more work than most are ready for.

A comparison between Hitler and Kim Jong-Un of North Korea is never going to be perfect. The situation is completely different in many ways, and the direct threat to the neighboring nations, while equally dire, is hard to compare.

But there is one key characteristic that the two leaders share without any qualifications: both have an absolutely pathological desire for blood and punishment. It goes beyond what is necessary to stay in power, requiring instead that the entire state and its population bend to their will. The psychotic behavior is actually enjoyed.

There is never anything wrong with sitting down and talking between leaders. In this particular case, Kim won something very important simply by meeting with Trump – legitimacy. His ego has been fed by the recognition of the world that he, too, is now a power to be reckoned with. If we are going to ask any question about him at this moment, it would be one that can only be answered by his record: “What will Kim do with his new power?”

That’s where we need to be afraid.

Kim Jong-Un looked rather happy. Does that concern anyone right away?

The desire for peace is a good one. The need to talk is critical. But to enter into these talks with a framework that suggests the problem can be solved quickly, with a single stroke, is absolutely crazy. The question, “What does Mr. Kim want?” seemed to be on the mind of Trump through the entire proceedings.

History shows us that this is exactly wrong, and is not the path to peace.

Much has been made about what was given up in this early round of talks. I can’t say for sure how important joint exercises are for the security of South Korea, so I will wait to see how Sec. Mattis and others respond to this. If all that these exercises did was provoke, then they should be stopped. There’s no reason to not show flexibility to the extent it is in your own interest.

This is what it’s about.

But the key question cannot be centered on Kim no matter what. There can be no question that what is in the best interests of nearly everyone in Korea, the region, and the world is for a unified and neutral Korea. Given that long term goal, the small number of people who would lose is a list topped by Kim Jong-Un. What he wants is an utterly irrelevant way of looking at the situation.

Whether it is respect, military aid, or construction of resort hotels does not matter one bit. What matters to the people of North Korea is a full belly and some basic human rights, things that they don’t have.

Very much like Chamberlain, Trump has gone into this whole process looking for a quick-fix and asking the wrong question. We cannot and should not care what Kim wants. To look at the situation from that perspective can only be called appeasement, and we see what that got Neville Chamberlain.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/06/13/appeasement/feed/7Chamberlain-Piece-of-Paper-e1493837426825wabbitoidIllegal Ordershttps://erikhare.com/2018/06/11/illegal-orders/
https://erikhare.com/2018/06/11/illegal-orders/#commentsMon, 11 Jun 2018 14:59:57 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8915Otto Ohlendorf stood tall in the courtroom in Nuremburg. His demeaner was as cold and unflinching as always during his trial for crimes against humanity. He easily recounted every detail of the murder of nearly a million people under his watch. After all, his conscience was relatively clear. “Befehl ist Befehl,” he told the court, “Orders are orders.”

More roundly translated, this has come to us as the famous “I was just following orders” defense. It didn’t work for Ohlendorf. He was convicted and hung for his crimes.

Workers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) today may feel that they are simply doing their job, that they are simply following orders. However, in the process of doing so they are violating the terms of the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, which as a signed treaty is also a violation of US law.

Otto Ohlendorf, after his arrest.

The basic principle governing individual action and refusal to follow orders is actually much older than the Nuremburg trials. The establishment of the rule of law came into western world slowly and unevenly, and the punishment of underlings for the action of a previous regime was often undertaken as revenge. At the time of the Nazi trials, the idea that “following orders” might be a defense was actually quite reasonable.

In the case of the Nuremburg court, it was established that the crimes were so severe and obvious that there was a moral obligation to resist orders. There were, however, very few who managed to do just that.

The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

And this from Article 16, section 2:

A refugee shall enjoy in the Contracting State in which he has his habitual residence the same treatment as a national in matters pertaining to access to the Courts, including legal assistance and exemption from cautio judicatum solvi.

The Founding Fathers made it clear in the Constitution – all ratified treaties are “The Supreme Law of the Land.”

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

There is no punishment listed for violations of the UN Protocol, but it is indeed what we can call the Supreme Law of the Land. No executive order nor local law can over-ride it. Everyone is bound to regard families as inseparable and to grant equal access to the courts.

Recently, a new policy has been put into place in detention centers around the nation. As reported by numerous local outlets, families are being separated. Access to courts to hear complaints about this treatment is denied. Refugees seeking asylum are in general treated not only with disregard for their rights under the UN Protocol, but in a way that is so obviously egregious that anyone can see that it is wrong.

A child, separated from his family, sleeps on a cot at a detention facility.

Workers at these facilities are a key part of the enforcement. Without them, the facilities could not operate. There can be no question that everyone needs a job to support themselves and their family, but what if that job includes illegal activity? What if that job includes something so obviously wrong that it cannot be covered by the simple defense that “I was just following orders?”

It is imperative that workers at these facilities be informed of their responsibilities under International and US law to not follow what are clearly illegal orders. The current regime will not be in place forever, and the possibility of prosecutions for violations of human rights is very real.

The workers at these facilities should be told that they will be held accountable for their actions just like those at the Nuremburg trials. These are not offenses that justify hanging, but they could carry severe penalties for those who are in charge of carrying out what are clearly illegal orders.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/06/11/illegal-orders/feed/8Otto_Ohlendorf_at_the_Nuremberg_TrialswabbitoidThe Real Enemyhttps://erikhare.com/2018/06/08/the-real-enemy/
https://erikhare.com/2018/06/08/the-real-enemy/#commentsFri, 08 Jun 2018 14:28:27 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8910The big summit is on after all. Trump will meet his most feared adversary face to face in an attempt to avert war.

No, not Kim Jong-Un. Those two are practically buddies, what with the same ambitions to be emperor and all. I’m talking about the G7 Summit where Trump has to meet his only real enemies – leaders of actual democracies.

This goes especially for the enemy next door, Canada. Now that Washington has taken their most prized possession, the Stanley Cup, you know that they are out for revenge. You can see it in the cold, murderous eyes of Justin Trudeau.

We’ve known for years that Canada is spying on us. You don’t have to be around too many flocks of geese to know that they are, indeed watching. Every move is carefully recorded as they freely move around the nation.

Some have converted into full-blown terror cells, striking without warning. Especially in nesting season.

Of course, that’s not the limit of Canadian stealth in our nation. There are literally thousands of them living among us, undetected. They seem nice, but once you get to know them you find out the truth: they really are nice, all the way through. And there is nothing more suspicious than that.

This is America, after all.

We are talking about a nation that obviously hates us. They have rejected our obviously superior health system in favor of one that works. They believe in punting on third down. And worst of all, their hatred is so deep that they went as far as to put a portrait of George Washington in drag on their quarter.

But we let it go because we don’t let the hate get to us.

You may argue that we should actuallylove Canadians for a lot of different reasons, just as we should love other allies. That’s where you are wrong. As a State Department spokesman pointed out, the anniversary of D-Day is a perfect time to highlight our relationship with Germany. We, as Americans, know how important it is to have far too many guns in every house, and statistics show that thee guns are far more likely to only shoot loved ones. Yes, that’s right – we were only shooting at Germany to show them that we loved them. That’s how it works.

Don’t fall for his ruse. He hates us.

We naturally fear Canada because no one can be that nice and intelligent. There is something wrong there. And we don’t shoot them out of that same fear, since we only shoot who we love. They haven’t figured it out yet, but they will.

And when they do, we’ll be ready for them.

That is, unless the master negotiator can come back from Canada with a treaty that puts them in their place. We want to have a strong trade surplus with them not … wait, we already do. Well, we want our Dollar to be stronger so that we … wait, we have that. Well, we want them to celebrate on the Fourth of July like a real American, not this pansy-ass metric First of July stuff. There you go!

And add some blue to your flag, will you?

We will win this conflict with Canada or we will go back to largely ignoring them. It’s one or the other, a real death match. Canada is, after all, the true enemy. We know this now. And we will do something aboot it.

If you have a healthy news diet, you can easily be forgiven for thinking everything is going to Hell. Then again, that doesn’t seem too healthy. Perhaps “No news is good news” has a resonance far beyond the original intent of the folk saying.

Is there good in the world? Of course there is. People are helping each other and just being decent all the time. Yet in a world always closer together it seems as though there is a shortage of good things everywhere.

The difference, I believe, is what lies just outside of human scale. The world comes to us through machinery – ripped of context, stripped of humanity. It’s up to all of us to provide some context with our own empathy and judgment. Seeing good in the world is indeed about unplugging our brains from the noise and reveling in a good time with friends, a quiet moment alone, or even an hour passed in a patch of clover.

If you want to go further, good writing resonates through all of the Chakras. But let’s start with three.

All good writing, especially political writing, has three components. I usually summarize these as “heart and arm and brain,” a line stolen from “The Mary Ellen Carter” by Stan Rogers. Think of it as reason, passion, and action if you want. A good piece has to resonate through the heart and head before sounding in a firm call to action.

Most of what is fed to us from national and international sources is stripped of its ability to sound and act clearly. Context takes time, after all, especially for those who aren’t there. Political writing often goes right for the heart, bypassing reason in favor of adrenalized passion which burns hot. The course of action isn’t always stated directly, allowing the now angry reader to decide for themselves that lashing out at the vile perpetrators is the only reasonable thing to do.

“The School of Athens” by Rafael

The problem with news, even when it comes from unbiased sources, is that politics is primarily about identity, not ideology. The word “politics” comes to us from the Greek word polis, or city. It is a term of organization which starts with citizenship or membership. It is not about thinking, per se, but about social organization.

What group or tribe do you belong to? How does that confirm your identity?

Immediately, interaction beyond the range of a smile or a kind word becomes an issue of identity. This is easily threatened in a world defined by anxiety, or a fear of the future. News which comes to us about a mysterious “other” can only reinforce the threat they may present to our own identity.

Nothing “good” can possibly come of this.

Progress would be good, yes.

So how does that help us to find good in the world? How can we rise above this to find a politics which is based on an open exchange of ideas without threats? How do we get to a place where we start from a place of respect and, when we can swing it, love?

I will say we shouldn’t “rise above” intellectually as much as “go below” emotionally. As Barataria has said many times about banking systems and many other things it’s not about a world that has passed far beyond human scale and is simply too big. It may feel great to be a part of a large national movement that is going to smash the system and all that, but true democratic change never starts at the top. It has to start with simply humanity. It begins with an empathetic heart open to love, a clear head not threatened by being wrong, and a strong arm always eager to help.

As the election year cycles through there will be many more attempts to rile everyone up with a belief that everything is going to Hell. The root cause will be what “they” are doing, whoever “they” might tend to be. There will be anecdotes and maybe some carefully selected data, but the real purpose will always be an unspoken call to action – rise up and defend your tribe!

The wise among us will resist. If your politics doesn’t begin with humanity you have a lousy politics. Start with our frailty, start with our vulnerability. Start with respect and a wide smile. Start with empathy for those in pain. Start with an acceptance that not everyone is in your tribe.

A politics that is by and for people, not systems, is a politics that always finds good in the world. Start with that and see if you aren’t amazed.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/06/06/the-good-inside/feed/1ChakrasWomanDescriptionwabbitoidIf you want to go further, good writing resonates through all of the Chakras. But let's start with three."The School of Athens" by RafaelProgress would be good, yes.When Economics Failshttps://erikhare.com/2018/06/04/when-economics-fails/
https://erikhare.com/2018/06/04/when-economics-fails/#commentsMon, 04 Jun 2018 14:20:18 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8905I have been working on this, now what feels like a year overdue. Look for more this week.

Economics is nothing more nor less than the study of the primary way in which people connect with society and get on with their lives.

In everyday life, you may interact with a few people – family, colleagues, and friends. But through the process of eating and paying the mortgage you interact, at some distance, with hundreds more. Because this interaction is entirely through something called “money,” a way of keeping score, it’s very tempting to look at it entirely through numbers. The dizzying details of tens of millions of exchanges every day makes a top-view in bulk the most desired method of analyzing how things are going.

Yet this process has proven wrong over and over again. The failure of economics, particularly macro-economics, is the primary reason why the only true study of an economy has to be a People’s Economics.

Vive ex Machina

The very idea that it is possible to get some kind of read on this massive thing called an economy in bulk is a product of the industrial age. The more the world came to be a series of whirring gears in need of motivating force and occasional maintenance the more it seemed desirable to even try to create something called “macro-economics.” This is nothing more than an analysis of where the money is at any one moment. Balance sheets, surveys, and contracts hold every number we need to understand and eventually control our world, the theory goes, awaiting only the right math to render it all into wisdom.

After the mechanical horrors of World War II it was a widely accepted belief that this mechanical approach would deliver us into some kind of mechanical paradise.

There is work to be done.

The problem with all of this is that it has not only failed, it has failed repeatedly pretty much from the moment it was implemented. It’s an approach which works very well in static conditions when everything is going along fine, but it has proven lousy at predicting the crises and shortcomings of our system. If analysis is going to have any use at all it would be when things change or go wrong – and indeed an economy based on technology is an economy based on constant change.

What we have now fails whether you look at it from the left, right, or center. This is not a political problem.

A good article on the problem with modern economics from a leftist perspective can be found in this undated article. They are summarized at the top very well, and boil down to this:

Economics has no respect for nature and resources,

The models are all built on unsustainable consumption, and

There is no place for resilience in the systems we have developed.

In short, the primary argument is that economics as we have come to understand it today is unsustainable. This is important to the left because the advancement of any social goal you can name – civil rights, equity, or environmental protection – is going to perform better in a sustainable world where individuals are not compelled to compete for every small scrap they can grab ahold of.

It always takes a little more.

That’s not to say that modern economics has many defenders on the right. As the “General Theory” of John Maynard Keynes was still hardening into the basis of modern economics it met its detractors form the outside. Henry Hazlitt was a journalist for the Wall Street Journal when he summarized the in his 1959 book, “The Failure of the New Economics,” now considered a foundation of Libertarian thinking. To Hazlitt, the problem with the era of macro-economics of Keynes was that had no concern at all for constant improvement and favored ever bigger intervention:

Because Keynes, with his lump, aggregate thinking, is opposed to restoring employment or equilibrium by small, gradual, piecemeal adjustments . . . we must achieve the same result by inflating the money supply and raising the price level, so everybody’s real wages are slashed by the same percentage. . . . The Keynesian remedy, in short, is like changing the lock to avoid changing to the right key, or like adjusting the piano to the stool instead of the stool to the piano.

These two are contrasted with each other here for several reasons . They are both criticisms from far outside the field by observers dismayed with the “product” that modern economics is in effect selling. They also have a unique symmetry to them in that they both decry an aversion to details – a key feature of macro-economics as we have come to understand it. Both of these observations come from the same perspective, after all. Macro-economics does not produce a product for them. It is designed for those who run things at various levels of government, not for the people who supposedly elect these leaders in a democratic republic.

The product was never designed for free citizens making choices in any social or political system.

Awaiting real leadership.

So, then, let’s take a look from the perspective of the managers of our world. If they are in place to make the best decisions possible for the people of this great republic, what is it that they really need? The ability to predict the future has to be the top definition of utility for any policy maker. After all, the wheels of government naturally turn slowly in the consensus-based system defined by our constitution.

So how is the predictive nature of today’s economics?

Bloomberg columnist and finance professor Noah Smith has studied the last official recession, in 2008. His conclusion comes from an in-depth study on that phenomenon, well predicted by the markets but not by economists. To him, it comes down to this:

Recessions just aren’t very predictable from economic data. The reason economists couldn’t foresee the Great Recession isn’t that they’re blinkered or closed-minded or arrogant or stupid – it’s because no one could predict it, at least not with the kind of macroeconomic data that now exist.

Where does this leave us? The conclusion is inescapable. Economics, as we know it now, is not suited for any kind of democratic politics – whether it is progressive or conservative. Nor is it particularly effective for anyone charge with the careful management of things from afar.

The future is theirs. Let’s make it bright!

What use is the mechanical, mathematical macro-economics which we have come to rely on? The long and short of it is that a large part of today’s politics, left and right, is based on the observation that something is deeply wrong. Voters, with great intuition if not always perfect logic, have it mostly right.

The truth is that no one actually knows what they are doing because the basic science which supposedly drives policy is deeply flawed. We really don’t know what we are doing and It’s long past time we admit that and simply start over.

That is the need for a new economics. That is the need for People’s Economics.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/06/04/when-economics-fails/feed/1Church-plantingwabbitoidUS vs The Worldhttps://erikhare.com/2018/06/01/us-vs-the-world/
https://erikhare.com/2018/06/01/us-vs-the-world/#respondFri, 01 Jun 2018 14:42:38 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8902The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced the addition of 223k jobs in May, bringing the unemployment rate down to 3.8 percent. Labor markets are tighter than they have been since the Managed Depression started in 2000, and there is upward pressure on wages. What could possibly screw it all up?

How about a global trade war pitting the US against every other nation on the planet?

Where are all those containers going?

We have discussed at length how destructive trade wars are and how they make no sense at all. Like any other war, there are never any true winners, just those who have lost less. The odds that America will wind up being the one who loses the least as we take on the rest of the world are approximately 24% – our total share of global GDP.

It’s a really dumb bet all around.

The longer term political ramifications are equally grim, especially as China makes huge advances in its influence. As a nation, they are intelligently run in many ways, save the oppressive politics which is the only thing actually holding them back at the moment. There is a lot more room for them to grow and they know it.

The VW plant in Chattanooga, TN

Why would the US start this now? There is no good reason. As it stands, we have a trade war developing with Canada, Mexico, and the EU. Trump apparently wants to eliminate German cars from American roads.

That is the problem with conducting a trade war from the position the US is in. On the one hand, we have the largest economy in the world and therefor the most to lose from a collapse in global trade. On the other hand, we aren’t big enough to really throw our weight around anymore and other nations, long sick of us throwing our weight around, are beginning to see this.

Ideas usually come to those who are busy working, actually.

None of this to say that there aren’t legitimate ways that the US could be tougher on various trade issues. China still has essentially no good enforcement of trademark, copyright, and patent protection normally associated with a genuinely developed nation. Our tariffs are generally lower than any of our trading partners, and that does not have to be the case any longer.

Measures like that would be reasonable. They would also spook the stock market, but that can’t be helped.

What’s being done now is simply the stupidest possible thing in economic, diplomatic, and social relations with the rest of the world. It’s the US vs The World, and you can reasonably bet that the world will win.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/06/01/us-vs-the-world/feed/0wabbitoidBeyond Politicshttps://erikhare.com/2018/05/30/beyond-politics/
https://erikhare.com/2018/05/30/beyond-politics/#respondWed, 30 May 2018 14:58:44 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8900This post from a year ago may seem like wishful thinking. After all, isn’t everything political these days? No, actually, it isn’t. We’re in a tribal war, and politics – the art and science of human interaction, especially for accomplishing social goals – is completely broken.

Our times are often described as “after”. The term “post-modern” came into vogue decades ago as art and architecture slid back into a desire for structure and meaning. “Post-racial” turned into a handy way for white people to never talk about what was right in front of their eyes. “Post-truth” became a useful word in 2016 as the effervescence of “truthiness” fizzled.

Welcome to “post-reality,” the final frontier of after.

It is easier to blame a cartoon than to blame ourselves, generally.

This goes beyond Russian hacking, firing James Comey, or even sharing intelligence. What matters right now is that every single thing in the world is a matter of opinion, which is to say that everything is fodder to inflame facebook. There is no objective reality of any substance in what passes for news.

The only great mystery left is why this doesn’t scare the bejaysus out of “conservatives”. That, alone, is proof enough that political philosophy is dead.

It goes without saying that the left has not been relevant to political thought in the US for a very long time. The Democratic Party, running away from the word “liberal” since about 1988, has ossified into the most conservative possible organization. It stands not for progress but for preservation – protecting your (health care, reproductive rights, environment, pension, voting rights, et cetera). The populist and otherwise apolitical concept of hope for a better tomorrow became little more than a slogan and a very cool poster before turning into a sick parody of itself.

“If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen.”

What we see now is a complete collapse of the right in a more spectacular way. Neo-conservatives pushing for a “new world order” were comical enough as the nation’s lone supporters of some kind of change, but things couldn’t possibly stop there. The future had to blur into the past, an impossible exercise that required suspension of disbelief on an epic scale. “Make America Great Again” always relied on some kind of ginned-up DeLorean which cannot exist outside of special effects and now is collapsing into something like a cocaine-fueled binge as the car company itself did.

None of this makes any sense or is particularly useful.

I cannot think of a political ideology, or even a thread of one, which seems relevant to “politics” as we know it today. The primary situation at hand is all about the relative sanity and/or competence of the president. More critically, I am convinced that the solutions to nearly every problem we have will require deep consensus-building compromise and a big whopping pile of data-driven common sense. That, and an old-fashioned sense of decency and respect.

There is not an “ism” in American politics today which explains anything useful.

What reality looks like?

One of my pet theories for the last 20 years has been the collapse of “left” and “right” as useful terms. I have been chided by many people, especially my friend Mitch, for this philosophy which I have been saying is true even as it is denied by nearly everyone else. I believe that what we are seeing is nothing less than the final fruition of this collapse, decades in the making.

So I will now claim I was right all along. I was completely off in the timing, the methods, and the ultimate cost of the process but I had the vague idea right. This is very much like my economic predictions, which always lack any reasonable method for capitalizing on them. No, I do not expect to ever be rich. But I can philosophize.

For this reason, I offer the term “post-political”. I hope it will be useful to describe all of you who are waiting for that which comes after as your facebook feed fills with pictures of kittens or, on a really bad day, baby otters.

The future is theirs. Let’s make it bright!

All of us who are biding our time as post-political operatives must realize that we cannot exist forever in the after. There has to be a now in order for there to, once again, be a genuine future. Hope has to be more than a poster, it has to be the foundation for Plan and Consensus and Action. So we will start with the now and define that as warmly and respectfully and intelligently and empathetically as we can.

After all, there is no after – there is only today. There is no government – there are only people. There is no grand theory which explains everything and will automatically create utopia – there is only basic decency.

If that doesn’t sound like a political movement to you, well, you’re just not post-political yet. Give it time. There is, after all, still time. Time is what separates before and after and, in doing so, defines the magical moment when we can all truly make a difference – right now.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/05/30/beyond-politics/feed/0politicianwabbitoidMemorial Dayhttps://erikhare.com/2018/05/28/memorial-day-6/
https://erikhare.com/2018/05/28/memorial-day-6/#commentsMon, 28 May 2018 14:13:38 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8898Memorial Day is a special holiday, and not just because it honors those who gave their lives for our nation. It was a spontaneous holiday that came about because it seemed necessary more than politically expedient. There was little official about it until long after it was part of our national calendar.

It started with some obscurity with unclear in its origins. The hundreds of thousands of graves of soldiers killed in the Civil War seemed to deserve a little sprucing up once a year as a way to honor their sacrifice. Weeds were cleared, flowers were placed, and a small flag was set to decorate the graves of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. “Decoration Day”, as it became known, apparently started even before the war was over in some places. The time of year was picked simply because the start of summer was when the earth itself was renewing.

The first declaration of a national holiday came in 1868. The Grand Army of the Republic, a Union veteran’s organization that maintained a military structure, called on all its members to have a unified Decoration Day on the last Monday of May. They had an enormous amount of political pull, so the celebrations were held across the North were often closely tied with government. It wasn’t until after WWI that the South observed the same Decoration Day. The day and name “Memorial Day” wasn’t officially recognized by the Federal Government until 1967.

Lack of official recognition never stopped anyone in the United States, or at least it didn’t used to, so Memorial Day has long been one of our cherished traditions. I was once in Brownwood, Texas and saw the graves of the local cemetery carefully decorated with the appropriate flags. A US veteran got the stars and stripes, a Confederate veteran the stars and bars, and the veterans of the Texas War of Independence the lone star. One grave had all three, a fearsome sight that made me glad he wasn’t someone I had to deal with alive today.

It’s not just the tradition that makes this a holiday worth celebrating, however. It’s about doing what’s right by those living and dead. We do well to remember those who came before us and what they did to make the world the way it is. A few moments to recall that we are where we now for a very good reason, a reason far too often soaked with blood, does more than helps us to appreciate what we have. That spirit has gotten us through a lot, and it can get us through whatever challenges lie ahead.

It’s our turn now, and while we’re not generally called on to fight in war we are called on to take our turn and serve. Those under the white tombstones gave far more than what we’re being asked to give. The least we can do is keep their markers and spruced up. We shouldn’t remember them today because we are told to, we should do it because it’s the right thing to do. That, and so much more.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/05/28/memorial-day-6/feed/2graveswabbitoidDistractionhttps://erikhare.com/2018/05/25/distraction/
https://erikhare.com/2018/05/25/distraction/#respondFri, 25 May 2018 14:55:46 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8895On a hot Friday before a holiday, it’s hard to stay focused. In this chaotic world, it’s usually hard to stay focused on anything, especially with supposed “leaders” relying on distraction and buzz rather than anything of substance.

So let’s play a little game of speculation. I have little to back up anything I’m about to say here, other than the simple and obvious fact that where the US has the attention span of a caffeinated squirrel, China is always playing a long game. As a colleague once told me, “China has had a bad 200 years, but we think the next 200 will make up for it.”

China has been in the news much more than usual lately, primarily because of the pointless trade war that is flaring up. This has riled the Chinese people themselves, who have been comparing the attempt at dictating a trade agreement to the 1901 Boxer agreement, as shown in this moving GIF circulating widely on weibo, created by an anonymous user. The main difference? In 1901, the humiliation of the Qing Dynasty was done with old men representing China, and today the old men represent the US.

A GIF circulating widely in China, showing today’s trade talks (old men representing the US) contrasted with the humiliating 1901 Boxer Accord, when China was represented by old men.

The dichotomy of this pairing of pictures cannot be over analyzed. On the one hand, China is young and nimble next to the aging US. On the other hand, who is it that has the 117 year long memory? For that matter, who has the right to a little bit of revenge served century cold?

Anyone who wants to confront China as an enemy needs to keep this in mind at all times.

That’s why the most recent rebuff of the US by North Korea, culminating in the cancellation of the summit, has to be taken as nothing but a distraction. Trump has been humiliated, yes, and it appears that he is being played as a chump. But mostly the master distractor is being distracted himself.

It might be unnecessary, given that Trump is so distracted by his only impeachable problems. Which makes the announcement that China’s Construction Bank is going to invest $500 million in a Trump Indonesian property all the more curious. China never makes big announcements, so why did they this time? It’s less of a bribe and much more of a statement – “We just bribed you!”

If it turns up the heat on Trump, as it should, it’s another useful distraction. Trump sure has to stay bizzy!

Ever get the feeling that all of this is just a Producers remake? That Trump wasn’t supposed to win and actually be … get this … responsible for stuff?

Now, if you’ve ever witnessed a con man in operation, you may have noticed one thing. Or perhaps you didn’t notice at first, since you are not supposed to. Cons are done by magicians, people who are skilled at getting you to look at their right hand while their left hand takes your wallet. Or, as Sun Tzu put it, “All warfare is based on deception.”

Keeping Trump and the US busy is going to have its advantages, without any doubt. But to what end? I still believe that where Iran needs friends and cash, and China needs oil and to make their currency convertible, there is a place for a critical alliance. We will know more after the Qingdao summit is over on June 6. Throwing Europe into the balance only makes it much more appealing. To pull this off will require having Trump and most of the US looking the other way until it is too late.

Of course, the lessons won’t be lost on the Europeans, who have gradually been expanding their own relationship with China. Just about the dumbest possible thing that could be done during this period? Well, the US could enact a 25% tariff on imported cars, a major industry for key trading partners Germany and Japan.

Is the master distractor himself being played? The short answer is that a con man will always keep playing at long as he thinks he is winning. A con can be conned when they stay at the table too long. And that appears to be just what is happening.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/05/25/distraction/feed/0Trade BoxerwabbitoidUnlimited Credithttps://erikhare.com/2018/05/23/unlimited-credit/
https://erikhare.com/2018/05/23/unlimited-credit/#respondWed, 23 May 2018 14:31:26 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8893This post from November 2015 is becoming more important as the federal deficit ratchets up and private credit is turning back up. I am leaving in the references to Sanders and progressive counters because they may well be current again.

If you’re like most people, you probably think that you can never have too much access to credit. After all, you never know what might go horribly wrong or when an opportunity to really follow your dream might come up. A little scratch ready in the background might be the difference between the good life and something much less.

Then again, a lot of credit has a corrosive effect. In a world saturated with borrowing everything is judged against the expected return if the money was simply loaned out at market rates. It seems reasonable that where a little credit is a good thing a lot of credit, defining everything in the world, is the biggest enemy of both long-term thinking and a society looking to maximize happiness and human potential.

Logic says that where a little credit is good a lot could be bad, meaning there is an optimal point. Where is that? Where are we with respect to a good level of credit? It turns out that train left the station a very long time ago – and this may explain a lot of the problems in this economy.

Roger Bootle is always looking out for new perspectives.

It’s important to define the terms before we get to the data. The issue at hand isn’t borrowing but available credit – whether it’s used or not. The term for it is “financial capacity” or the ability to finance everything in the world. The concern is that simply having credit available is the main force creating a world where everything is defined in terms of its monetary value, right now, rather than any social or satisfaction.

The root of this perspective comes from looking at the economic world as a dichotomy of sorts – those actions that produce goods or services which are new and those actions that merely distribute what is already know. Economist Roger Bootle, one of the most esteemed economists in London and frequent contributor to the Daily Telegraph, separates the two this way:

The whole of economic life is a mixture of creative and distributive activities. Some of what we ‘‘earn’’ derives from what is created out of nothing and adds to the total available for all to enjoy. But some of it merely takes what would otherwise be available to others and therefore comes at their expense.

Successful societies maximize the creative and minimize the distributive. Societies where everyone can achieve gains only at the expense of others are by definition impoverished. They are also usually intensely violent.

Much of what goes on in financial markets belongs at the distributive end.

Workers of the World, Unite!

In other words, financial people don’t actually make anything. The more we use them as our yardstick and the more we consume their services the more we become a world of a well defined pie – all gains come at the expense of someone else.

His warning, that this is the root of a violent society, is especially chilling.

Bootle is far from a political progressive, too. His point is the rather conservative (small “c”) one that the financial world may be necessary but at some point it actually contributes to instability and short-sightedness because its contribution to the “product” of society is ultimately nill.

Barataria has written about this problem from many other perspectives in the past, the most important being that of resiliency – the ability to weather storms on a personal and social level. But this has come to the presidential campaign in a speech by Hillary Clinton decrying “Quarterly Capitalism” which deserves far more attention.

“You’re money’s not here … it’s in your house, and yours!”

All this is well and good, but can we define a point where there is an optimal level of credit available to grease the skids and allow us to realize the good life without becoming slaves to the financial industry? According to a 2012 paper written by International Monetary Fund (IMF) economists Jean-Louis Arcand, Enrico Berkes and Ugo Panizza we can empirically define a such a place.

Leafing through both a history of thought on this topic and national economies over the last century, they were able to come up with a reasonable answer. It turns out that when available credit to the private sector hits between 80-100% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) the effects of having more credit are actually a net negative for growth.

The financial world starts to dominate and the bean-counters take control from the entrepreneurs, engineers, and artists – as well as the workers and doers. Too much credit means the unproductive, distributive world makes slaves of the productive world. How is that? Give the authors the first word:

This result is surprisingly consistent across different types of estimators (simple cross-sectional and panel regressions as well as semi-parametric estimators) and data (country-level and industry-level). The threshold at which we find that financial depth starts having a negative effect on growth is similar to the threshold at which Easterly, Islam, and Stiglitz (2000) find that financial depth starts having a positive effect on volatility. This finding is consistent with the literature on the relationship between volatility and growth (Ramey and Ramey, 1995).

In shorter words, the higher the reliance on finance the more there are “bubbles” which mis-allocated resources and increase volatility – as we saw in the many bubbles that defined the 2000s.

Given this rough gauge, where is the US now? Where have we been? Financial Capacity is easy to calculate and graph – and the results tell us something amazing:

Financial Capacity, defined as available private credit as a share of GDP, since 1952. Data from the St Louis Federal Reserve.

Despite a recent pull-back, Financial Capacity has been expanding rather continuously since the end of WWII – and currently stands about double that magic optimal range estimated by the IMF. More interesting, the mid-point of their estimated optimal maximum, 90%, was hit sometime around 1974.

There’s always a fight. This one is more interesting.

If you lived through the 1970s you may have a strong opinion about what exactly went wrong. Acceptable answers include Nixon, hairspray, polyester, disco, and cocaine. It’s pretty rare to find someone who will tell you there wasn’t something terribly wrong throughout that decade.

Barataria has written before on the broken social contract between labor and capital that used to divide the fruits of the economy 50/50. That unwritten agreement was broken about 1974, with the split now 57/43 in favor of capital. The difference is far from trivial – about a trillion dollars a year or $9,000 per household.

What exactly happened in 1974 to change the relationship? In the past we’ve offered a few suggestions centering on labor markets, globalization, and increasingly cheap capital. Add to that list a very subtle effect that makes that year an important turning point – it was the year that finance started to become a net drag on the economy, the year when the financial operators took control and started to define everything in our lives on their terms.

Feel the Bern? That flame has to last if he’s gonna do it.

If this is the case, how do we get rid of them? The answer doesn’t come from politics, although your opinion about the decline of workers over the last 40 years probably informs your opinion of Sen Bernie Sanders, at the very least. The answer comes from our own choices about how we rely on credit, as individuals and as a society – and how that makes slaves of our thinking and ultimately changes our choices.

What will it take to return control to those who, in the words of Roger Bootle, are “creators, not distributors”? There is a chance that a few laws here and there might make access to credit more difficult, but that misses the point.

Easy access to a lot of credit is more of a social value than anything else. Change that and we may just change the world – and free the creators, the makers and doers, to have a good life once again. And let’s not forget Bootle’s observation that societies which fail to understand this are “usually intensely violent” – something that constantly gets our attention in today’s America.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/05/23/unlimited-credit/feed/0Roger BootlewabbitoidRoger Bootle is always looking out for new perspectives.Workers of the World, Unite!"You're money's not here ... it's in your house, and yours!"Financial Capacity, defined as available private credit as a share of GDP, since 1952. Data from the St Louis Federal Reserve.There's always a fight. This one is more interesting.Feel the Bern? That flame has to last if he's gonna do it.Moving Beyond the UShttps://erikhare.com/2018/05/21/moving-beyond-the-us/
https://erikhare.com/2018/05/21/moving-beyond-the-us/#commentsMon, 21 May 2018 16:26:37 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8890The United States is typically a very self-absorbed nation. As the largest economy in the world, and separated by two oceans, US based news and the opinions it shapes have always been centered on domestic concerns projected out into the world. This has only been exacerbated by the a pathologically self-absorbed president.

Because of this problem, the simple fact that the world is fleeing away has escaped many Americans. What has been a growing practical reality as the US share of the world economy slips is becoming a necessity thanks to severe foreign policy mistakes, all of which cater to a domestic audience. “All politics is local” remains true, even though it clearly should not be.

The two biggest foreign policy areas, a trade war with China and sanctions against Iran, appear to be two different situations with the US at the center of both. They are not, and increasingly will become less and less about the US. This simple fact is going right past us, too – making our policies even more ridiculous and harmful to our own interests.

China is much more than a giant factory making stuff for the US.

The announcement that the trade war between the US and China has been put on hold has been universal greeted with relief. Is it possible that the two nations will now get along? Is Trump securing a huge victory against a grossly unfair trading partner?

The short answer to both questions is an obvious “No.” China is clearly biding its time while it strengthens its hand. Key disputes, such as respect for intellectual property under Chinese law, have been put on hold. At this point, there are only vague promises. Wil there more? It’s unlikely.

World Bank data on the relative shares of the nearly $80 trillion world economy.

The US simply no longer has a position of supremacy in the world economy. Now less than a quarter of world GDP, Europe is essentially the same (especially with the UK added) and China is growing rapidly to the same size. There is no reason to think that the US can throw its weight around without other effects. As we attempt to force policy on the rest of the world, the most reasonable course of action is becoming, more and more, to simply ignore the US as much as is possible.

It was once our greatest strength. It’s not going to be that forever, thanks to serious blunders.

In response, US National Security Adviser John Bolton has threatened that the US may impose sanctions on Europe. This is unlikely to survive even in this Congress, but the damage is already being done. Europe is being given no choice but to write off the US if it wants to have its own policies in their own interests – and, of course, they do.

But this is not the only way in which Iran is becoming a greater problem for the US. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is a group founded by China for the purposes of bolstering China’s trade and diplomatic standing with key neighbors. Membership includes China, Russia, the Central Asian Republics, and curiously both India and Pakistan. China has seen this as a way to encourage peace and trade through the region, but Russia has tried to turn it into a military mutual defense pact.

China has many things going for it, but oil is not one of them. Its economy relies heavily on oil imports, all of which have been priced in US Dollars. It is the primary reason that China has to maintain a large reserve of US Dollars, usually held as interest bearing US debt. If it can secure oil on its own terms, China’s dependency on the US naturally declines.

This is also true of South Korea and Japan, two nations whose largest trading partner is China. They hold a routine tri-nation summit to discuss issues like the economy. At the most recent summit in Tokyo, North Korean issues occupied most of the time. But the growing trade, especially in semi-finished high tech goods, is drawing these economies together, as is their need for oil.

The Chinese Yuan (Renminbi).

If Iran starts writing contracts in Renminbi, China suddenly has unique access to the one resource their region needs. With the potential construction of a canal across Thailand to make oil deliveries to East Asia cheaper and easier, the integration of Iran and China will be complete. Note that the total share of world GDP of China, South Korea, and Japan is already about the same as the US even without high growth.

If Russia gets its way at the Qingdao summit, the admission of Iran will be about much more than oil. A mutual defense pact would turn US military intervention in Iran from extremely costly to plain suicidal.

The problem for the US an extremely simple one – the rest of the world is growing to the point where the US is not as important as it used to be. Between China’s ambition to not be thrown around by the US (or anyone) and Europe’s growing need to find its own way, the relevance of US policy is going to wane no matter what. Ignoring this reality is only making the situation worse.

China and the EU have been increasing cooperation and trade dramatically, and will without any doubt grow closer. Centering on Iran, and the possibility of oil outside the US Dollar world, the two have a strong common interest. It will move forward, and it already is.

The self-absorbed US? So far, most Americans aren’t even aware that this is happening.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/05/21/moving-beyond-the-us/feed/6chinaworkerwabbitoidBread & Circuseshttps://erikhare.com/2018/05/18/bread-circuses-2/
https://erikhare.com/2018/05/18/bread-circuses-2/#commentsFri, 18 May 2018 14:21:56 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8887Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things – bread and circuses!

– Juvenal, Satire X, “Wrong Desire is the Source of Suffering”

The “Fall of Rome” trope has always been an easy one to dismiss. After all, we’re stronger and more connected than they ever were, yes? The public is more literate, our history is stronger, and times are simply different than they were back so very long ago.

Aren’t they?

The poet Juvenal,

When the famous phrase “bread and circuses” was coined by Juvenal about 100AD, Rome was in an interesting spot. It would be several centuries more before the empire actually fell, but it had been no more than 50 years since it reasonably should have fallen. Decadence and corruption was actually behind them more than it was ahead of them at that point. They managed to survive Caligula and Nero and had dramatically stabilized under the Flavian dynasty, founded by the great hero Vespasian.

The vantage point was not one of absolute destruction, therefore, but more of unnecessary suffering. And Juvenal, great poet of a great age, summarized the political problem outside of politics itself. The root, he saw, was an inappropriate desire generally gripping the population.

With this framework, we can contemplate the potential death or near-death of our Republic, which depending on who you ask may have already occurred. Unlike Rome, we are a Democratic-Republic, which is a fancy way of saying that we get the kind of government which we deserve. Every accusation leveled at the government – it is corrupt, it is lazy, it is ineffective, it is incapable of evolving – is really a confession of sorts.

The great beauty of Democracy is that the political process includes a very large mirror.

It doesn’t help a thing, but it’s pretty much what we do.

While we consider the state of unreality which is gripping America today, we have to see it as much more endemic than Trump, Congress, or anyone shilling on CNN. There is little doubt that “truth” is an entire negotiable commodity in the minds of most people involved. But the roots of this are considerably deeper.

Culturally, we are about as void of reality as any reality teevee show. Electing the star of such a production is actually the most reasonable thing we’ve done in a while.

The more I think about it, the more I have to conclude that this is nothing more than a symptom of Affluenza. It’s all ennui, that wonderful word for the boredom that comes from having it all. It’s stunning to think that in the richest nation in the world, the richest nation of all time, we find so many ways to turn our treasure into unhappiness. None of this is political issue as much as a mass psychological problem, a retreat into various fantasies ranging from the lives of celebrities to Hollywood eye candy to dystopian inventions which justify general bad feelings about the state of our lives.

That’s not to say that everyone is rich – far from it. Many people have a lot more than others, and we certainly have a nearly infinite capacity to walk past those who are homeless or otherwise in pain without thinking twice.

Meet George Jetson. The Button is his master.

Culturally, however, we have absorbed the great luxury of living our entire lives in a fantasy. Our great treasure goes not to actually fixing important problems, such as increasing automation or a rapidly aging population. It goes instead to finding an appropriate scapegoat for our problems.

Of course, many people are left behind. Rural areas are suffering from the pull of better opportunity in cities as the nation continues to urbanize. Those left behind are often sucked into a wave of drugs, meth and opiods, which may be finishing off the next generation of rural life completely. The future has to be absolutely terrifying – meaning a retreat to a mythical past is actually a reasonable option.

It doesn’t solve a thing, of course. But it’s reasonable.

So back to Juvenal’s observation after a terrifyingly unreal period of history had passed. What went wrong? Nearly everything, it seems. But at the root of it all was a lack of proper understanding of what actually makes people happy. A world without hope or respect or empathy is a world of suffering.

What we have in front of us, screamed and shouted, twisted and convoluted, is nothing more than a constant cry of pain. That pain comes from a great deal of wealth and a great deal of want colliding in ways that make no sense whatsoever.

The fall of the Republic? All a matter of what we, the people, desire.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/05/18/bread-circuses-2/feed/4juvenalwabbitoidThe poet Juvenal, It doesn't help a thing, but it's pretty much what we do.Meet George Jetson. The Button is his master.Reason as a Journeyhttps://erikhare.com/2018/05/16/reason-as-a-journey/
https://erikhare.com/2018/05/16/reason-as-a-journey/#respondWed, 16 May 2018 14:20:58 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8885“Conventional Wisdom” isn’t.

Everyday life is the process of understanding and using key facts about the world around us. The sky is blue, red means stop, the 94 bus leaves at 7:53, and coffee will wake you up. Most of the important things in life are obvious enough, based on immediate observation or past experiences strung together.

However, the presence of technology and a growing interconnectedness impinges critical “facts” onto our lives which reach far beyond our senses and sensibilities. Cell phones work because they just work, this thing called “money” in our bank account is extremely important, people who live in distant lands are motivated by something akin to demonic possession, et cetera.

This is where it all breaks down. Or, more importantly, where things breaking down accelerates as reason itself fails.

Logic. Facts. Things that are supposed to rule our world.

Some of these “facts” are relatively unimportant – if the cell phone breaks all it takes is some of this “money” thing to either fix or replace it, assuming you have some. There are people who handle all of the details of the complicated world we can ignore most of the time. The exception comes when we elect leaders, as per our supposedly shared values, who will be in charge of making it all run properly. Then, we expect to understand a lot of things which are not right in front of our daily routine.

Cognitive psychologists have been studying the processes by which we assemble abstract musings into a collection of objective facts we might call “reason”. On a good day they are mixed with enough intuition to become “wisdom”. We can always hope.

The problem is that reason itself is not as cold and binary as we are all led to believe.

In a thorough if dense analysis of reason itself, authors Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber outline in “The Enigma of Reason” how what we believe to be objective is, in fact, entirely subjective. From the amazon blurb:

Reason … is not geared to solitary use, to arriving at better beliefs and decisions on our own. What reason does, rather, is help us justify our beliefs and actions to others, convince them through argumentation, and evaluate the justifications and arguments that others address to us. In other words, reason helps humans better exploit their uniquely rich social environment.

In short, our acquisition of “facts” is less about some abstract notion of “truth” and much more about our social status.

Who is in our tribe?

This should not be surprising, especially given that much of language itself is about social status and not about conveying information. We are, in fact, social creatures – which is entirely the author’s point. Nothing exists outside of a social context, which is why so many people eagerly believe things which are easily shown to not be true. It is very rare for humans to seek out facts which change our opinions or other understanding of the world, but rather we seek out facts which simply confirm that which has already been established through a more social process.

You may be utterly dismayed by this prospect, as the author of this review in the New Yorker appears to be. You can also find hope in the identifiably collaborative nature of reason, as this review in the Financial Times did. But the implications are far more vast than our opinions.

It doesn’t help a thing, but it’s pretty much what we do.

Take, for example, this article in a right-wing “news” source. It turns a routine traffic stop turned into a large investigation as something even more sinister – evidence of a plot. Not just any plot, mind you, but yet another anecdote from Hell which “proves” that refugees are actually out to kill us all. There is a kernel of truth at the heart of it, with link provided. It then stirs in a few blatant lies such as “recent arrival” and a huge dollop of opinion to arrive at its larger point.

“Fact,” in this case, is more about the journey than the destination.

Lest you break out into a case of smugness about how “those people” do this all the time, here is a piece on the twisted “truth” repeated in otherwise reputable media about Portland killer Joseph Christian. Far from being an alt-right Trump lover, he was something more of a general purpose nutcase who strongly supported Bernie Sanders. His goal is not wedded to one ideology but more to the desire to see the world burned down, probably for the incendiary pleasure of it and little else.

Mind the Box.

In each of these cases labels and boxes were put to use to frame an easy narrative. The process was supposedly described by reason, but through the twists and turns actually runs in the converse – reason itself is defined in this way. It is purely social. The biases which stand in the way of genuine objectivity are actually the underpinnings of how all of us understand the world just beyond our immediate gaze.

This naturally brings up serious questions on the nature of democracy.

This is more important that the obvious political considerations which arise when we select our leaders or determine policy, however. Socially we come to conclusions which govern everything we say and do on a daily basis – and how we all get along. Various prejudices constantly creep into our definitions of self, which regardless of how independent we claim to be are constantly defined by our interactions with the world around us.

As Barataria has noted before, the only truly useful conflict of labels today is Reality vs. Nonsense.

And as we all run screaming back into more comfortable boxes in search of safety our ability to engage in this very social thing called “reason” itself naturally diminishes. The only way out to break out of the spiral is to “unask the question,” which is to say stand apart for a moment and reject the noise, counting on reason and perhaps wisdom to form somehow apart from the clearly social processes we rely on to understand anything. If that’s a bit too complicated, let’s simplify it considerably:

The ying-yang symbol most commonly associated with Taoism. Each has its birth in the other, all is in harmony – but nothing is static.

If that goes beyond enigmatic into arrogant, please forgive me. The point is that sometimes the best conversations necessary to engage in this very social phenomenon called reason take place across time, not distance. The natural bias which arises from this is that everything is very much the same, and it is critical to watch out for that. The truth is that progress is obvious enough around us on a daily basis even if some of it lacks a useful context for any of us to understand it.

How can we get past the failure of “reason” which defines our world far too well? By starting with the few objective truths we see around us every day. The sky is blue, people are people, and we all do things that sure seem like a good idea at the time. We all have our reasons for everything. A little formality which gives us the space to be ourselves along with respect for everyone else being themselves is the one social context which may indeed create “reason” as we have come to venerate it.

With enough of our hearts in it this might even become “wisdom”.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/05/16/reason-as-a-journey/feed/0reasonwabbitoidGlobalism Isn’t Failing. Industrialism Is.https://erikhare.com/2018/05/14/globalism-isnt-failing-industrialism-is/
https://erikhare.com/2018/05/14/globalism-isnt-failing-industrialism-is/#respondMon, 14 May 2018 15:07:45 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8883The process of the world coming together has been irregular at best. It seems reasonable that through it all there would be winners and losers, as we have seen. What is remarkable is how globalism, as a concept and a reality, has divided the developed world. Working people with less access not only feel left behind, in many cases their standard of living is actually slipping.

It seems as though there is a fundamental flaw in globalism. Yet the flaw may be in how we approach not just globalism, but the forces which created it in the first place. What if the process of the world coming together, driven by market forces, is fatally flawed because of our inadequate understanding of marketism?

In short, what if the transition from an industrial world to a market based world is not as seamless as we want to believe?

What a “job” used to mean for many.

Just after World War II, the United States was alone on top of a ruined world. We survived not only intact, but stronger thanks to tremendous public and private investment in industrial infrastructure. The only potential downside, realized in a series of short but brutal recessions in 1947 and 1958, was a lack of demand for all the goods that the United States could produce.

Industrial methods were employed to take care of this, of course. Tourism became an organized industry, as did education and entertainment. Advertising became the industry which drove so much of the others, as products were pushed out into the world and demand manufactured.

The concept is highlighted in the Twilight Zone episode “A Stop at Willoughby,” aired on May 6, 1960. An advertising executive is on the verge of suicide from all the pressure, and longs for a simpler time. “It’s a push, push, push world!” he is told, over and over. It’s all about pushing products.

We do not live in this world any longer. It’s not about production, it’s about demand. It’s not about making, it’s about buying. It’s not about what a few engineers or designers can come up with, it’s about what consumers identify in focus groups. It’s about the market, not industry.

A free market. If only it was all this simple.

This seems like no significant change at all according to standard rhetoric and dogma. Isn’t industry all about capitalism and a free market? The short answer is no, it is not. A conversion to a market based world does indeed change everything.

Industry, as a slave to the market, has to be flexible. Long-term relationships with workers are difficult at best as things change constantly. Engineers can no longer invent in isolation, but have to respond to market input. Most truly new ideas as come not from a “skunk works” inside a company, but from tinkerers in a garage operating on a small scale with little overhead. Financing does not come from a relationship with a bank, but form a global market of finance or a stock market.

A true market based economy is completely different from an industrial economy in many ways. Yet we have never understood it as such largely because of our own rhetoric. We have confused capitalism, where money finds its own way, with marketism, where people make decisions. We still measure trends in bulk, even workers, rather than emphasizing skills and the demand for them.

What will the consumer choose?

The difference seems subtle, but only because we have been taught that it is so. It is not. The conversion to a market based world from an industrial world defines the change which took place in the Managed Depression of 2000-2017. This was the process by which the old economy, based on industry, finally died off and a new economy based purely on markets rose.

What is the new economy, then? Saying it is defined by information is easy enough, but plumbing the depths of this is more difficult. Information is primarily about consumer choices, even those the consumer does not understand yet. Demand can be created, but information is primarily about understanding demand. It is essential to mastering the business world. Production? That comes later in some shop somewhere in the world, who really knows and who really cares?

Everything changes as a result. The nature of work is probably the most important. The nature of finance and how money moves around also changes significantly. Innovation itself is very different, based less on the need to maximize the utilization of machinery and more on the demand of the market.

Why is globalism failing? Don’t blame the child, blame the parent. The understanding of the world which created globalism badly informed the process because it has been mired in the past. A market driven world is very different from an industrial world. That’s the problem.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/05/14/globalism-isnt-failing-industrialism-is/feed/0machineshopwabbitoidNarrowing, Learninghttps://erikhare.com/2018/05/11/narrowing-learning/
https://erikhare.com/2018/05/11/narrowing-learning/#respondFri, 11 May 2018 14:21:56 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8881This piece from ten years ago reflects what I have organized my entire life around for 22 years – my children.

When a child first opens its eyes, it has no idea what it is looking at. All it has are bizarre images and an imagination that works to make sense of it all.

In between is a sense of wonder, the deep feeling that it all makes sense somehow if you just keep drinking it in. That, and keep playing with it.

I never use pictures of my own children, to respect their privacy.

Watching my children grow has been a great experience that can’t be matched by anything. I know I was once in their place, but somehow so much of it has been forgotten. It’s as if understanding the world was a goal that, once achieved, allows you to look back on the journey with nothing better than a memory fogged by embarrassment. But that journey is what being a kid is all about, and in one way or another what being a parent is about.

Every child starts with a tendency to pick up a paintbrush and paint with broad, sweeping strokes. In kindergarten, every painting is a landscape, a vast panorama of the mind. By the time they learn to write, however, the tight grip on a pen turns their art into detailed works much smaller in scale. They no longer need large pieces of paper, but can doodle on nothing more than a post-it.

The same thing happens with their toys. They start out large enough for clumsy hands to grab, but gradually become smaller as the kids become bigger. That may seem to run backwards, but the kids themselves stop playing airplane and start playing airport; they go from cars to racetracks, from dolls to tea parties.

In all of these cases, the proper development of a child is seen as an ever-tightening focus on details. That’s reasonable enough, but what about that vast imagination that held the whole world in outstretched arms?

We all start out with a mind that can understand the bigger picture of the world, but lose it to all the finer skills needed to be “civilized”. This is a big part of why we develop what I call Cultural Autism, which is the inability to understand the spray of information that is fired at us every day. The bigger picture of imagination and wonder is the only hope we have to make sense of the wider world being thrown at us as if we were all toddlers once again.

It’s all something that works best from the guts, the part of our mind that once propelled a large paintbrush across a tremendous sheet of paper. When he as asked what it takes to be a great painter, Pablo Picasso said, “A clear mind, a firm hand, and the eyes of a child.”

That’s also true of being a good human being, too. We’re all born with the right skills, but they are trained out of us. The result is a limited ability to keep learning with the part of our brain that is capable of making sense out of too much information. The best we can do is to re-learn it from our kids as they grow up later. It’s a good second option to not forgetting it in the first place and remembering that the goals and journeys aren’t such terribly distinct things.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/05/11/narrowing-learning/feed/0kidswabbitoidEight Reasons Why Ending the Iran Deal is Stupidhttps://erikhare.com/2018/05/09/eight-reasons-why-ending-the-iran-deal-is-stupid/
https://erikhare.com/2018/05/09/eight-reasons-why-ending-the-iran-deal-is-stupid/#commentsWed, 09 May 2018 15:03:59 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8879The United States has withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal. It is probably the stupidest possible thing to do at this time. Why? Here are eight reasons, most of which are fairly conservative in nature.

Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran.

1. It damages US influence in the region. The deal is going to be saved by Europe, Russia, and China. As a result, they will have all the potential influence over the region and the US little. Our most important partner in the region, Turkey, already has strained relations with the US over the Kurdish question and has expressed its dismay over our withdrawal in stark terms. “Iran will never compromise on this agreement, and will abide by this agreement to the end. That’s what I think. However, the U.S. will lose in the end,” President Recep Erdoğan told CNN.

2. We have gone back on our word. It is common in the US to say, “Obama made the agreement …. Trump undid the agreement.” That is not how the rest of the world sees this. To everyone else, the US made an agreement and then went back on it. Period. Political instability is not an excuse. We have demonstrated that we are a nation that cannot be relied upon. As someone once wrote in a book called The Art of the Deal, “Once you have a deal, you cannot go back on it. If you go back on a deal no one will ever trust you again.”

3. Sanctions are unenforceable. Trump said that we will be returning to a regime of sanctions against Iran. This is nonsense. We do not have the staff in place in the Treasury Department to do this even if it was possible. And without the rest of the world going along, sanctions are indeed not possible. You want Iranian oil or pistachios or whatever? Buy them from Europe, no problem.

4. This destroys our real power. Make no mistake about it, Iran will continue to pump oil into tankers. Do not be surprised if the contracts for that oil are now written in Euros. That will mark the first time a significant amount of oil is sold in anything other than US Dollars anywhere in the world. It is the first crack in the US Dollar dominance over the world, and once started it is unlikely to be the last. Once Europe has a taste for the stability that comes with Euro contracts for goods, they will start demanding more of them – first from other oil producers, then with everyone. The Bretton-Woods Agreement that created US hegemony after World War II is likely to be the final casualty of this withdrawal. And if oil contracts are priced in Chinese Yuan Renminbi, that fall will come even quicker.

The source of all chaos.

5. Russia wins. Through the horror of the Syrian War, Russia has become closer to Iran. This will increase. More importantly, Europe now must understand that the US is not reliable, and they have to deal with Putin on their own. They have two choices – either improve their own energy self-reliance or move closer to Russia overall. Being the European Union, they will likely do both. And that will mean more Russian influence in Europe and a potential end to the recent willingness to confront Putin.

6. China wins big. For nations that are frightened by an unreliable America, there is one nation that is completely reliable and never changes no matter which way the wind might be blowing. China is a rock of stability in a dangerous world. It is very hard to make a deal with them on favorable terms, but it looks like the investment is worth it for many Asian nations. South Korea and Japan are holding a trilateral conference right now, and you can expect US perfidy to be a topic.

7. Iran’s hardliners win. It suits the extremists in Iran to seal off the nation, blame everything on the US, and continue causing havoc in the region with their various proxies. They now have not just an excuse, but solid proof that the US is indeed a permanent enemy. The nation has become sick of their support for Assad, Hezbollah, and various other fighters while they suffer. But it is now clear that there is something like a war going on. The Iranian moderates lose a powerful argument.

8. Oil will go up. The recent rise in oil prices has everything to do with perceived instability in the world, particularly with regard to Iran’s ability to pump oil. This is likely to calm in coming months as the deal holds without the US. But the upward pressure on oil prices is likely to remain as long as people are nervous, and for all the reasons above they will. This puts pressure on US inflation, already running high, and with it US interest rates. In a time when calm is needed for US markets, we have more uncertainty.

These eight reasons are not the only reasons why breaking the deal is stupid. They are simply the most realpolitik and obvious ones. Transforming the US into a nation that makes good use of diplomacy and its real power, the US Dollar, is something that has to happen. We are far too quick to simply send in our brave soldiers and sailors to do work that is much better done without wasting the blood of America’s best. We have to be a nation which stands for building the world, not destroying it. We must never have permanent enemies.

There is no doubt that Iran has been a rogue nation that needs to be brought into line. This deal should never stand alone as an end, but needed to serve as a staring point for Iran’s entry to the family of nations. Such an effort will take diplomacy and strength both. But we have neither as a result of this decision. Our word is shot, and our allies are not with us. We have lost.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/05/09/eight-reasons-why-ending-the-iran-deal-is-stupid/feed/18wabbitoidWorker’s Paradisehttps://erikhare.com/2018/05/07/workers-paradise-2/
https://erikhare.com/2018/05/07/workers-paradise-2/#respondMon, 07 May 2018 14:35:31 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8876This piece, from 2015, is a good one to mark the 200th birthday of Karl Marx. His analysis of history, and where it appeared that we were going, was remarkable in many ways, mostly in how badly it was misinterpreted. As we move ahead to a market driven economy that is remarkably distinct from an industrial economy, an understanding of Marx (along with Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, and Milton Friedman) seems more essential every day – assuming it’s done properly, that is.

Imagine for a moment that you live in the most fair and equitable economy you can dream up. There are some very specific things that most people in the developed world, especially Americans, would think would be a part of this.

There would be upward mobility, where family circumstances do not determine the kids’ future. People could find their own way according to their own talents and choices as to what makes a good life. Money would rarely limit dreams, as a free-flowing capital market would provide funding for good ideas at reasonable rates. Most would own their own homes and have control over their own destiny. Workers would own the company they work for, banking their retirement at a reasonable age on the place that they helped build. Basics like food and access to health care would not be expensive.

Such a place is the embodiment of pieces of both the Democratic and Republican parties in odd turns. This place of the imagination has also been pretty close to the perfect state envisioned by Karl Marx, although it may be descending into an oligarchy (which I prefer to call “gangster state”).

Karl Marx

The world rarely understands the work of Karl Marx in a way that makes sense. His work was taken over by radicals roughly 150 years ago and morphed into something even Marx could not relate to – at the end of his life he famously said “The last thing on this earth I would want to be called is a Marxist”. 100 years ago the perverted form of his work was crystallized into a “Socialist Republic” – Communism as we came to know it. It was a brutal dictatorship that ran nearly the opposite of Marx’s vision.

I like to joke that the world is divided into those who think Marx was always right and those who think he was always wrong, when in fact he had an amazing ability to be half right about everything. For the first person to take on his subject, however, half right ain’t bad.

What Marx laid out in “Capital” was a new way of looking at human history. The struggles of history were not about the nobility of kings but the way material goods and land were distributed among people. It was all about the stuff – who had it, how it was created, and how it could be taken away. The lack of the basic scratch to survive started revolutions and was the primary threat to the ancient order that stood two centuries ago.

Workers of the World, Unite!

Two things should stand out right away. The first is that this is the prevailing view of all history among even very “conservative” people right now. The second is that when you avoid big “Marxist” terms like “dialectical materialism” the real meat of this analysis starts to sound pretty obvious.

In this Marx’s view of history, it seemed clear that where he stood at the early end of early industrialization was not a place that could possibly last forever. The skies that separated monarchs from their supposed divine charge were thickened with black smoke that separated the two as clearly as night and dim day. That’s how Marx came to see history as progressing from where he was into something else – a classless society where workers owned companies and basic needs were taken care of.

That wasn’t realized in the Soviet Union. It came true much more clearly in Employee Stock Ownership Plans, 401ks, and a host of programs that make up the social safety net of a developed nation. We are far more “Marxist” today than anyone who ever made that claim.

What keeps the global economy keepin’ on.

This may sound academic, but there are interesting features of this Marxist world in which we live that seem hard to explain. The first is that of the six largest economies (by currency), #1 Euroland, #2 USofA, #4 Japan and #6 UK are struggling under the weight of government systems that appear to be based on the free market but are in fact tilted towards socialized risk for the financial industry. The ones that are doing well? #3 China and #5 Brasil, both of which are much more overtly “socialist” (though I would not bet on hard-core China too heavily in the near future).

But if you want to find a European nation that is doing pretty well, look to Sweden – often a bulwark of Social Democracy and scorned by lovers of the free market everywhere.

There is a lesson here. As we think about the Next Economy and how we can shape it, the struggles of people to obtain basic freedom, especially freedom from want and desperation, very much defines our world. But that world is not contained easily in a narrow mythology defined two centuries ago. That world also defined something that we came to think of as our enemy, even as we worked to achieve what was truly at the heart of it.

Revolution? An awakening of the Romantic spirit? It’s been there all along. And, in odd ways, we were doing pretty well before we became horribly distracted – in different ways than other people became distracted, but whatever. Let’s try to keep our eyes on what’s important, shall we?

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/05/07/workers-paradise-2/feed/0marxwabbitoidmarxWorkers of the World, Unite!What keeps the global economy keepin' on.A Celebration in the Familyhttps://erikhare.com/2018/05/04/a-celebration-in-the-family/
https://erikhare.com/2018/05/04/a-celebration-in-the-family/#commentsFri, 04 May 2018 15:50:27 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8873Of all the holidays, Cinco de Mayo is one of the strangest. As a holiday for people of Mexican ancestry, it is hardly even known in its home nation. It is a commemoration of a battle which ended an occupation absolutely everyone would otherwise rather forget. Its celebration is more commercial than cultural, coming off as something like St Patrick’s Day with better weather and better food.

But this is as good of a day as any to study the strange relationship between Mexico and the United States. With all of the twists and turns of a telenovela, this story is also one of an extended family with far too much effort wasted fighting.

A mural depicting the Battle of Peubla.

Traditionally, in many European nations, the future of children was decided as they were born. As girls were all prepared to become ladies and mothers, boys had their roles assigned based on birth order. The eldest inherited the land, the second become a soldier, and the third became a priest. So it is in our North American family of three brother nations, The United States, Mexico, and Canada.

As a dutiful soldier, Mexico has always been content with hard work. The culture seems to be based on gratitude for life and whatever pleasures it brings as much as anything. Sitting around and whining for fairness and more attention is simply not part of the character of the nation.

On a day like Cinco de Mayo we can see that this is a good way to enjoy life. But it’s a hard way to move ahead and be stronger.

La Bandera de México

A wise man who came from Mexico once told me that he never saw the Mexican flag in Mexico, but has seen it flown proudly and often here in the United States. People never think of themselves as “Mexican,” apparently, until they are told as much. As a result, Mexico is probably the one nation on this planet that could actually benefit from more nationalism.

It has a long way to go, with one tenth the GDP and one third the population of the US. But this is only comparing Mexico to the US, a game that never suits anyone. What matters is that as the 11th largest economy in the world Mexico has something to grow on as it moves away from the family that is rejecting it.

What does it mean to be Mexican today? More and more, it means a person who is still grateful but now has room for a certain level of well deserved pride. It’s a person who takes care of business and still has time to enjoy life. It still means no whining, but increasingly even more determination.

Indeed, the problem for Mexico has always been that it feels compelled to compare itself to the United States. By doing this less all the time, the comparison has unquestionably flipped. People from the Estados Unidos seem much, much less in far too many ways as Mexico marches forward.

That alone is worth celebrating on Cinco de Mayo or any day, frankly. ¡Salud!

To celebrate this day, I give you the fabulous Tish Hinojosa and the song Banderal del Sol (Flag of the Sun). Imagine standing on the border with two flags flying in the hot breeze – one red, white, and blue and the other red, white, and green. Above them is the flag of our common humanity, the flag of the sun. And through the heat and the tension comes this beautiful voice capturing the moment perfectly.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/05/04/a-celebration-in-the-family/feed/1Bandera MexicanowabbitoidRenewing Our Citieshttps://erikhare.com/2018/05/02/renewing-our-cities/
https://erikhare.com/2018/05/02/renewing-our-cities/#commentsWed, 02 May 2018 14:53:27 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8871American cities are booming, or at least some of them are. The process of re-invention has been difficult and uneven for the economy as a whole, and old industrial cities are no different. The keys to successful cities? Reinvention, inclusion, diversity, and education.

That is the conclusion of a report from the Brookings Institution entitled “Renewing America’s economic promise through older industrial cities.” An analysis of the legacy industrial base shows that some cities have been successful, others have not. The differences? In large part, a willingness to embrace change and diversity, giving it the space and tools they need to blossom.

What a “job” used to mean for many.

The story of cities like Detroit and Cleveland is rarely told often enough in America. It’s as if we are embarrassed by them, and in many ways that is reasonable. The astonishing blight that has taken root as many industrial cities have fallen is a genuine tragedy.

Much of this decline can be linked directly to racism, like everything in America. White flight from Detroit left the city vulnerable and accelerated its decline, without a doubt. What has proven less obvious is how these cities acted as regional engines of growth, and their eventual decline put even more pressure on much smaller industrial cities around them. As went Cleveland, so went Akron and Canton.

But why did they not eventually recover on their own?

The Brookings report highlights what made some cities successful. In all cases, it is a dynamic partnership of public and private. Their summary of the winning recipe:

Public and private actions have focused on (1) identifying and investing in key technological capabilities; (2) spurring strategic urbanization; (3) preparing a diverse workforce for current and future opportunities; and (4) stewarding inclusive growth at the regional scale.

These key items are important enough that they need to be evaluated individually so that we can understand what they mean in detail.

Did you get our jobs?

Investing in key technological capabilities is something rather like what a developing nation does when it creates an industrial policy. In the US, it’s done city by city rather than as a nation. As such, it has less control over the population and has to succeed quickly. What technological capabilities need investment? Generally, it’s going to be the basic support of a regional industry of some kind.

Strategic urbanization is a difficult one. It means that the receding industrial glaciers of the city need to be replaced, and important pieces of land need to be redeveloped. It is, without any doubt, a public private partnership that involves urban design. It will take talent and care.

A diverse workforce starts with an open and successful education system. The role of education at all levels is going to be critical. This means not simply opening schools of all kinds, including vocational, but making sure there is access to them and that they perform.

Inclusive growth means that no one is left behind, and the emphasis on the whole region is important. Connections to and through the city are what make it stronger. No neighborhoods can be walled off, and no towns can be isolated.

In summary, the report identifies four key investments that need to be made: Industrial capacity, land, people, and connections.

Many hands make lighter work. Many different hands make the work a triumph.

None of this should seem surprising, and it cannot be considered as such. But what separates cities far too often is not the will or the talent, but the divisions which prevented them from making the necessary investments in these key areas. The most significant among the many divisions is racism, without any doubt, often expressed as a rural-urban divide defined by exurban white flight.

What can and should be done about this? On a national level, support for cities has to be increased. But that support is not measured primarily in dollars. Reports like this are an excellent start as expertise is shared among cities. We do know what works and we have seen it happen.

In the end, however, like most investments the necessary investment for successful reinvention comes down to a matter of faith. We have to go beyond the obvious lines and have the will it takes to make these investments and then make them work for everyone.

We have the resources, we have the knowledge. What we are missing is unity.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/05/02/renewing-our-cities/feed/2machineshopwabbitoidOn American Privilegehttps://erikhare.com/2018/04/30/on-american-privilege/
https://erikhare.com/2018/04/30/on-american-privilege/#commentsMon, 30 Apr 2018 14:22:53 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8869A repeat from a year ago on a bizzy month end.

Any essay on “privilege” has to start with a solid disclosure. As a middle-aged pale male, I have no business lecturing anyone on privilege. I’m at the top of the heap, and I know it. That is my point in this piece, after all. I have the privilege of contemplating privilege.

It still seems to me to be primarily the benefit of the doubt. If I walk into a store, I’m a customer – not a potential thief casing the joint. If the cops pull me over I get a certain level of respect that not everyone does, and I do use this to my advantage at times. If things get really bad and guns are pulled out, the benefit of the doubt makes me the good guy in the split second decision that separates life from death.

I have no illusions about any of this. That is, actually, my point through all of this.

I know I’ll be OK based on this color. That’s white privilege for ya.

My friend Mitch is a very conservative person in nearly every respect, but we get along well. He’s a decent guy and someone you’d want on your side when things get bad. He once told me that the recent assault on “privilege” as a concept rankles him for one simple and good reason – he thinks that everyone deserves privilege.

Phrase that as “the benefit of the doubt” and I completely agree. We need to think in terms of leveling up, not leveling down.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and discussing it particularly with my friends outside the United States. One thing which becomes obvious when you think globally is that Americans, as a people, are all highly privileged. We are a nation full of it, which is to say that we have the benefit of the doubt to just about everyone – and sometimes quite a bit more.

What is the lingua franca? Why is that phrase not in English?

There is probably no more valuable skill in the developing world than simply being a native speaker of American English. Everyone who can read this is highly valuable in a world coalescing around our language as the primary code of conversation that binds this planet a bit tighter every day. That we are paid in US Dollars only adds to our privilege, even if it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of them left after we pay our bills.

American news outlets are uniquely respected around the world, too. This is not a joke.

This has a lot to do with how, to the rest of the world, “globalism” and “Americanism” are essentially the same. We all know that globalism isn’t working well for an awful lot of people everywhere, and the backlash is growing. What has largely escaped most Americans is that when this is expressed as anti-American sentiment, even hatred, it has the same root as the outraged which propelled a near majority to vote for Trump. It naturally comes out differently in America given that it makes no sense for us to hate ourselves.

Or does it?

Is this the real American Century?

No matter what kind of American you are – black, female, gay, Latino, transgender – your situation is much better here than it is just about anywhere else. That doesn’t mean that you should be happy with it, and it’s definitely true that far too many non-white-hetero-anglo-males die every day. But it certainly means that those who are unwilling to give you the benefit of the doubt have absolutely no appreciation for the privilege that they have.

This seems like the real problem. This seems to be the root of the relentless whine at the heart of our politics.

If the worst thing in your life is dealing with a transgender person in public, or (god forbid) a bathroom, you have immense privilege. If you feel a rage build when someone who grew up being told they were inferior starts chanting that their life matters, you have intense privilege. If your politics routinely separates our nation into “them” and complaints about “those people”, privilege has come to utterly define you.

It’s time we were all much more honest about our privilege. It’s the first step towards realizing that there is an awful lot more of it to go around – for everyone.

It doesn’t help a thing, but it’s pretty much what we do.

This problem is very much at the root of the easily manipulated and abused racism which propels far too much politics in abstracted code language. Far too many people will tell you that President Obama, as one example, divided the nation and pitted us against each other. How is that? Because he actually created a space where people started talking about race and privilege and asked for those on the top to contemplate that not everyone is there as well.

The first rule of the White Club is that you don’t talk about the White Club.

Privilege is not a problem when you know how to use it. As Americans, we have defined this world and will continue to do so. The privilege which we all have is very powerful and nearly limitless. There is, indeed, plenty of it to go around to everyone who carries with them the most respected brand name and identity the world knows – American. Questioning it or even asking for it to be shared in a more reasonable way is not a threat to anyone, anywhere.

If we were honest about our privilege nearly everything in our politics would improve dramatically. Without this, all we have is yelling and whining. And we sure have a lot of that.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/04/30/on-american-privilege/feed/2_75201112_languageswabbitoidGet What You Pay Forhttps://erikhare.com/2018/04/27/get-what-you-pay-for/
https://erikhare.com/2018/04/27/get-what-you-pay-for/#commentsFri, 27 Apr 2018 15:28:08 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8866Every day a new video circulates of bad behavior by police. Someone is harassed, beaten, or even killed in what appears to be an absolutely senseless fashion. Far too often, the victims are black – but not always. It can, and does, happen to nearly anyone.

Earlier this week, another video came in from Toronto. Constable Ken Lam was seen facing down the suspect in a mass killing with determination and grace. He never flinched, and eventually made a peaceful arrest. It was law enforcement at its very best.

What is different? There are many things that made this different, including the race of the suspect, to be sure. But as an example of the kind of cool professionalism we all hope to see in our police there is one important difference in Toronto – their law enforcement officers are paid much, much better than the average US cop.

Constable Ken Lam and his father, Officer David Lam.

Constable Ken Lam may have been born to be a cop. Here he is posing with his father, David Lam, an officer in the Hong Kong Police. There’s no doubt that remaining cool under fire and managing the adrenaline that comes with a tense situation is helped by the right genes. Not everyone is born to be a hero.

Beyond the smiles, however, the Toronto police have had their own small scandal for many years. It was revealed three years ago that, with all the various overtime and special assignments, more than half of their force earns over C$100k per year. It actually averages C$120k per year per constable, about US$100k.

This compares with the very highest paid police force in the US, in San Jose, California. Both cities are expensive to live in, so a full breakdown of any given officer’s budget and their family expenses is hard to calculate. What we do know is that, on average, a police officer in the US makes about $61k per year. The total cost of police salaries is about $40 billion, with a total cost including benefits near $80B.

Ken Lam probably makes nearly US$100k per year, or a solid 66% more than the average US officer.

Well, the laws do apply to you. Plus a little more.

There is no doubt that in the US, we need to insist on much higher standards for our police. We need them to de-escalate situations, not make them worse. We need to stop protecting those who create mayhem and violence. We have to insist on much, much more from our officers in general.

In exchange, we have to support them much better in every way. They need the right training. They need backup from community organizers and city hall itself. They have to be protected from burnout and PTSD. And, on top of it all, we have to pay them much better as we insist that they act as the cool professionals we know we need.

You do indeed get what you pay for.

Police in the US are uniquely funded entirely by local governments. At the bottom of our political structure, their budgets are usually squeezed by a number of different forces. They all rely heavily on property tax, which is usually regressive. They face competition among themselves for tax breaks given to relocating large employers. Local government, which provides most of the essential services we rely on, is always heavily squeezed.

Good police are expensive, and are often the biggest single expense to local government. That has a lot to do with the lousy pay and understaffing that is so rampant.

De-escalation is a value.

There are many differences between Ken Lam and the police that are seen in far too many videos acting in ways that none of us want to see in our officers. Being from a cop family certainly has a lot to do with his cool professionalism. Crossing international borders also has a way of focusing the mind on fundamentals as you learn to navigate a world where so much is different.

But one of those differences is that as a Toronto Constable, Lam is paid like a professional. His pay is indeed controversial, and many in the city wonder if they should be paying their police as much as they do.

The results speak for themselves, I think.

$80B spent on police may sound like a lot, but it’s only one eight of what we give to the Defense Department every year. Local governments might well need support from the federal government if we are going to improve the quality of our policing. But any such proposal has to come as part of a general package, a new policy for better policing all across the nation.

IF we want better from our police, we have to insist on it, as many activists have been calling for. We also have to show them more respect, which is indeed often measured in dollars. It takes both to turn this around, and we have to find the money somewhere.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/04/27/get-what-you-pay-for/feed/1Ken David LamwabbitoidOur Brother’sKeeperhttps://erikhare.com/2018/04/25/our-brotherskeeper/
https://erikhare.com/2018/04/25/our-brotherskeeper/#commentsWed, 25 Apr 2018 14:18:48 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8864“Everyone is an idiot, not just the people with low SAT scores. The only differences among us is that we’re idiots about different things at different times. No matter how smart you are, you spend much of your day being an idiot.”

– Scott Adams, “The Dilbert Principle”

Three years ago, I was attempting to return to normal life after dealing with my brother’s suicide. I had no idea how awful my own life was about to become. Then again, this piece showed that I had a clue. Yes, I have my moments when I can’t cope with things most of you consider simple and routine.

We all know someone who just can’t handle something we consider part of daily life. The guy who simply doesn’t “get” facebook, the woman with no interest in a cell phone, and in urban areas like St Paul even people who refuse to drive. These are all complications that are a bit too much for their simple life.

There are limits for everyone in this world of increasing complexity. We all hit them constantly, too. For many people, however, life itself just gets past them.

Dilbert is good at what he does, but clueless outside of it.

The definition of a “vulnerable adult” is “any person who lacks the absolute most basic human life skills by reason of not having learned them through the formative years of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. A vulnerable adult is unable, rather than unwilling, to properly learn or properly maintain these skills, and is usually completely without, and unable to obtain, any family, friends, acquaintances or other assistive persons in their lives to offer education or assistance in these areas.”

That’s an eyeful, and it’s full of qualifiers. It’s hard to get out of responsibility for yourself once you are over the age of 18 in the US today. Yet beyond the extreme example that serves as a sociological, psychological, and legal standard there are a lot of areas in between.

As Scott Adams pointed out, there isn’t a person who doesn’t daily confront a situation that they simply cannot deal with. Many of them are in technology, but some are in social obligations in an ever more diverse world.

Many people feel angry when the world gets away from them constantly.

There are two typical responses to any situation where someone is made to feel stupid. One is resignation and withdrawal and the other is anger over having to deal with the situation in the first place. Much of our politics today comes from anger which comes from people who suddenly find themselves living in a world they don’t understand anymore.

This was made very real to me when combing through the life of my brother, Brad, after his suicide. He was extremely gifted as a technologist, an expert in both lasers and ultrasonics which can pump high energy into small areas. His twelve patents in the medical device area show how brilliant he was. His salary at the last company he worked for showed that he was extremely valuable.

Throughout his life, however, interacting with people was often difficult. Things most people would find simple, such as being at a party, were filled with peril. When he made a lot of money he started playing with stocks and bonds, slowly gambling it all away until he was broke.

This is not business reporting.

Through much of this last week back at home I have had to get over the feeling that I have a blood feud with eTrade. Didn’t they know that he was a vulnerable adult who, for all his brilliance, was too obsessive to handle the world of daytrading? The short answer is no, they didn’t and no, he wasn’t “vulnerable”.

But there it was, this tantalizing world of high finance that promised more than anything else independence from the difficult world. Brad probably couldn’t resist.

The idiocy that we all experience daily should be humbling. It should be the start of a good joke told when friends come together. But sometimes the way the world gets away from us is far more deadly than we know in the moment. Many times we have no idea we’re in over our abilities until it’s too late. Like a kid behind the wheel of a sports car, none of us know what the limits are until we push them.

And at some point, we all have to be our brother’s keeper, stepping in to help avoid disaster. I wasn’t able to do that in time for my own brother for reasons that I will have to talk about later.

But that is the secret of how any of us are going to deal with a changing world that is constantly more complex, diverse, and closer every day. We have to find ways to laugh at our own idiocy and intervene in ways that are not embarrassing or insulting when things get out of hand.

That’s not going to require a lot of new laws, that’s going to take a change in our culture away from the sense of self-reliance that defines being an American. It won’t be easy, but it is essential.

We are all our brother’s keepers at some point. That’s only going to become more apparent as the noise of this bizzy, buzzing world only becomes more deafening.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/04/25/our-brotherskeeper/feed/4angerwabbitoidDilbert is good at what he does, but clueless outside of it. Many people feel angry when the world gets away from them constantly.This is not business reporting.Nuking the Narrativehttps://erikhare.com/2018/04/23/nuking-the-narrative/
https://erikhare.com/2018/04/23/nuking-the-narrative/#commentsMon, 23 Apr 2018 15:27:44 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8861North Korea has agreed to de-nuclearize! Trump’s foreign policy is a success!

Headlines something like this have been circulating for a few weeks, but they contain more errors than words. North Korea hasn’t agreed to remove nuclear weapons at all, but appears ready to try to negotiate for some reason. Any concessions on their part almost certainly have little to do with the US and a lot more to do with their only benefactor, China.

And the world is a much more dangerous place to the extent that anyone believes that North Korea is somehow becoming more peaceful, especially when it comes to believing this is a result of anything to do with the US.

Missile test make good photo-ops. The message is that we are expected to be scared of North Korea.

The nuclear tests in North Korea have been a problem for years. Coupled with missile tests, they send a very strong warning to the region and the world – North Korea has a deadly bomb, and it can deliver it. The news has rightfully concerned everyone around the world for very good reasons.

But nowhere has it struck more fear than in the neighboring nations of China and South Korea, however. The response by South Korea is understandable and predictable, but China has reacted in ways that set two significant precedents that simply cannot be overlooked.

The first was that China voted to support strong UN sanctions against its longtime ally. While many were critical that it was slow to enforce them, by March 2018 they were fully in place. The delay was only reasonable, although the western press is impatient as it looks for proof of Chinese intransigence. There was none. It simple took some time to tighten the noose and make it clear that this time is very different.

Xi Jinping. This is about as close to a smile as he ever has.

The second unprecedented event was on 26 March when Kim Jong-Un made his only trip outside of North Korea since he assumed power and went to Beijing. It appears that he was summoned by Xi Jinping, but there is no doubt that they had a lot to talk about. All discussion of any progress in Korea comes after this visit, which makes it rather clear what they talked about.

Why is China the main player? Simply put, they are far more scared of a nuclear North Korea than just about anyone. It’s also a violation of the agreement that China had with Kim’s father and grandfather, a pledge of support as long as they weren’t a nuclear power. China has prepared its citizens for nuclear war, stirring up considerable alarm and making the government look very weak and hapless. This is a personal affront to Xi’s power and prestige in many ways.

In response, North Korea has been far more mild than probably any nation wants at this time. When they say “Denuclearization” what they mean is … well, it’s nearly impossible to tell. They have admitted that they have an advanced program and they intend to keep working on it, so it appears to mean absolutely nothing. They are simply saying words at this time.

So what’s going on in North Korea? A flurry of discussion but no significant action on their part. China is clamping down harder all the time but not getting much of a response. The US has almost nothing to do with the situation, despite our best efforts to look important.

Not everything in the world is all about the US, after all, so we should not be too concerned about that point. This is China’s problem, first and foremost. They will have to deal with Kim and they apparently are. Whatever we expect from Trump or whatever he says is really just noise at this point. And we need to regard it as that.

The main role of the US needs to be to not screw everything up. The first step in doing that is not believing Kim’s nonsense. So far, we’re failing on that part.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/04/23/nuking-the-narrative/feed/2North-Korea-Missile-Reuters-1wabbitoidDe-Bunking Buncombehttps://erikhare.com/2018/04/20/de-bunking-buncombe/
https://erikhare.com/2018/04/20/de-bunking-buncombe/#commentsFri, 20 Apr 2018 15:17:54 +0000http://erikhare.com/?p=8858It’s a beautiful day and I haven’t done anything fun in a while. Let’s try this from two years ago – back when we could laugh at Trump.

Every election year, it’s critical to evoke the Founding Fathers. What plan for a strong military would be complete without the spurious blessing of the Father of The Country, George Washington? How could you float a plan for tax givebacks, er, reform without evoking the Father of Liberty, Thomas Jefferson? Who would dare enter a conversation about the sanctity of our national credit without the hallowed words of Alexander Hamilton – or, indeed, his apparent ability to sing and dance his way to 16 Tony nominations?

No one, that’s who. But the process of doing so actually invokes one of the most important Founding Fathers of all, Felix Walker. His contribution to politics is nearly endless and absolutely critical.

Felix Walker, after all, was a US Representative from Buncombe Country, North Carolina, and as such gave us the concept of “bunk”.

There are no known portraits of Felix Walker, so here is a pic of Mel Gibson from “The Patriot”. Why not?

The details of Walker’s life are, appropriately, a bit sketchy. He was born in what is now West Virginia in 1753, but moved around the southern colonies a lot. Walker fought in the Revolution with North Carolina and went on to represent the Tarheel State in Congress in from 1817 – 1823. That’s where he made his mark on politics forever.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was slogging its way through the legislative process like anything contentious, which is to say slowly and painfully. For those not familiar with the bill, it declared half of the state would be pronounced “mis-sour-EE” and the other half “mis-sour-AH”.

No, actually, the legislation was a complex package which admitted Missouri as a slave state, Maine as a free state, everything north of Missouri would be free states in the future, and, most importantly, Congressmen would continue to hate each other but not actually shoot at their opponents for 41 years.

At the end of the mind numbing process which produced this compromise Walker rose to speak. His narrative, titled “Speech for Buncombe”, was very long. So long, in fact, that the rest of the House was afraid he’d keep talking until the Civil War arrived right on schedule.

Paul, if you think you have it bad, you ain’t paying attention to history.

They yelled at him, “Stop!”, “Please, please stop!” and “Stop or I’ll kill myself!” It was all in vain. Walker was determined to get up there and ramble on about the people back home – almost certainly so that he could tell them their voice was heard on this critical legislation. Nevermind that no one could hear him over the wailing, whining, and shouting in the House chamber.

At this great juncture in US history, the House had to pause for its usual nonsense – elevated to an art form. It was a moment to remember.

Remember it, we do, because “Buncombe” joined the English language to describe meaningless political speech for purely electoral purposes. Spelled “bunkum” and later shortened to “bunk”, it came to mean, “foolish or untrue words”. It’s essentially the same thing.

Which, naturally, brings us to Trump. How much is he the undisputed king of bunk, by any definition you care to use? It’s best to ask the popular “de-bunking” site, politifact.com, which evaluates statements and tabulates results by candidates. If there is a better antidote to mind-numbing nonsense than mind-numbing data please let us all know.

Seriously, there has to be a better way to refute this nonsense.

How do today’s candidates score? After evaluating 579 statements by President Obama, politifact found 21% were “true” and 27% were “mostly true” – a net truth rating of 48%. Similar results were found for Sanders, 51% true, and Clinton, 50% true.

Trump? His net rating was 2% “true” and 6% “mostly true” for a net truth score of only 8%. His score is very similar to that of “chain emails” at 6% overall. It’s incredible!

Where would we be without the contribution of Rep Felix Walker, the original Voice of Buncombe? Like all great men of the past, Walker’s nonsense was probably well grounded in eloquence and grand ideas. Today’s practitioners probably can’t hold a candle to his rhetorical ability as they make up whatever BS works for the moment. Yet this is all conjecture since Walker’s speech was not written down and is remembered only as gibberish which interrupted an historic moment.

That, ultimately, is the moral of this story.

]]>https://erikhare.com/2018/04/20/de-bunking-buncombe/feed/2wabbitoidThere are no known portraits of Felix Walker, so here is a pic of Mel Gibson from "The Patriot". Why not?Paul, if you think you have it bad, you ain't paying attention to history.Monument to Felix Walker somewhere near where he is believed to be buried in Clinton, Mississippi.